Try free for 30 days
-
Customs
- Poems
- Narrated by: Solmaz Sharif
- Length: 44 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Customs
Buy Now for $4.11
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
I said what I meant
but I said it
in velvet. I said it in feathers.
And so one poet reminded me
Remember what you are to them.
Poodle, I said.
And remember what they are to you.
Meat.
—from “Patronage”
In Customs, Solmaz Sharif examines what it means to exist in the nowhere of the arrivals terminal, a continual series of checkpoints, officers, searches, and questionings that become a relentless experience of America. With resignation and austerity, these poems trace a pointed indoctrination to the customs of the nation-state and the English language, and the realities they impose upon the imagination, the paces they put us through. While Sharif critiques the culture of performed social skills and poetry itself—its foreclosures, affects, successes—she begins to write her way out to the other side of acceptability and toward freedom.
Customs is a brilliant, excoriating new collection by a poet whose unfolding works are among the groundbreaking literature of our time.
