The Far Mosque

by Kazim Ali

Overview

These gently fragmented narrative lyrics pursue enlightenment in long, elegant yet plain-spoken, dark yet ecstatic lines. Ali travels by water and by night, seeking the Far Mosque and its overarching paradox: that when God and Self are one, an ascent into Heaven is a voyage within.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781882295531
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	10/01/2005
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Kazim Ali lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, where he is co-editor of Nightboat Books and an assistant professor of liberal arts at The Culinary Institute of America. He received his MFA from New York Universityand is the author of a novel, Quinn’s Passage (BlazeVox Books). His poetry has been published in The Colorado Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Rattapallax, and elsewhere.

Read an Excerpt

Still Life with Vase and Music

Four red boats clack against each other softly, lashed to the dock.
A vase is meant to hold, not to unravel.

Each tow-rope is a thread. Each thread is a chance to weave.
The vase gives form to emptiness, as music does to silence.

At the poet’s tomb in Kashmir supplicants tie green threads
around the bars to achieve the fulfillment of their prayers.

I do not want to return home without that which I came for.
“The poet was here—but he’s gone now—you’ve missed him.”

The river turns three times on the journey home.
I tie the thread around my own wrist bone.

Editorial Reviews

The Far Mosque by Kazim Ali is a book in which the author has managed to render into the English language the universal inner voice. These poems talk to the reader from the realm in which we are all human. What a poet to be able to define spirit using the American vocabulary! These poems, so very different from my own, speak clearly to me. What a gift!”—Lucille Clifton

"There is an intricate interweaving of themes, symbols, and allusions and leitmotifs that makes The Far Mosque, resonate with a sense of great drama... Ali’s strength lies in that inner music, where meanings reveal their deeper power." -Painted Bride Quarterly

From the Publisher

Moving between biblical and Qur'anic stories, sections of this debut explore questions of comparative faith: "Why not a religion of water in a time of great fires?" Painterly minimalism, open-field technique and Near Eastern traditions together give Ali a neatly varied verbal palette for his smart, quietly attractive poems. Single-line stanzas and unrhymed couplets portray visionary and partly abstract spaces where "all the eventual answers are nothing," and a questing reader "will sometime soon say: I am coming home now." A sequence set in France finds the same calm conundrums in its cathedrals and beaches, with their "silent groundswell, the swell of silence," while in later poems Ali pays homage by name to Emily Dickinson, to Rumi and to the painter Agnes Martin. Readers who seek explicitly Islamic material will find it near the end of the book, where unrhymed sonnets and an accomplished ghazal trace a search for spirit in nature and in the void: "Night" advises a rapt observer: "You are no plagiarist of dusk./ Nothing in the sky equals itself." Ali has also published a novel, Quinn's Passage; his unresting intellect and acoustic talents make him a poet to watch. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Ali, author of the novel Quinn's Passage, reveals a rich and daring poetic voice in his first book of poetry. If one of the poet's tasks is to revive the mythological powers in things, Ali does so skillfully here. The poet aims to expand the space of meaning by relying on the juxtapositions of dense and deep imagery: "The wind over open water: Sharp howling/ Guitar strings breaking." His poetry is reminiscent of the works of French poet Ren Char in its surrealistic style and lyrical fragmentations. In addition, the mystic voices of the East, which express a passionate yearning for a harmonious unity with absolute beauty, are echoed throughout most of his poems. Here the self delves inward to discover and celebrate the pure light of awakening: "One day in the marketplace, estranged and weeping/ you will understand the only far mosque is the one within." Ali's poetry resists any easy interpretations and hence invites the reader to participate in the act of writing. Recommended for large public libraries.-Sadiq Alkoriji, Tomball Coll. & Community Lib., Harris Cty., TX Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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