Seam

Other Works in the Series, Back Cover

other books in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Muse Susan Aizenberg Lizzie Borden in Love: Poems in Women’s Voices Julianna Baggott This Country of Mothers Julianna Baggott The Black Ocean Brian Barker The Sphere of Birds Ciaran Berry White Summer Joelle Biele Rookery Traci Brimhall In Search of the Great Dead Richard Cecil Twenty First Century Blues Richard Cecil Circle Victoria Chang Consolation Miracle Chad Davidson From the Fire Hills Chad Davidson The Last Predicta Chad Davidson Furious Lullaby Oliver de la Paz Names above Houses Oliver de la Paz The Star-Spangled Banner Denise Duhamel Smith Blue Camille T. Dungy Beautiful Trouble Amy Fleury Sympathetic Magic Amy Fleury Soluble Fish Mary Jo Firth Gillett Pelican Tracks Elton Glaser Winter Amnesties Elton Glaser Strange Land Todd Hearon Always Danger David Hernandez Heavenly Bodies Cynthia Huntington Red Clay Suite Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Fabulae Joy Katz Cinema Muto Jesse Lee Kercheval Train to Agra Vandana Khanna If No Moon Moira Linehan For Dust Thou Art Timothy Liu Strange Valentine A. Loudermilk Dark Alphabet Jennifer Maier Lacemakers Claire McQuerry Tongue Lyre Tyler Mills Oblivio Gate Sean Nevin Holding Everything Down William Notter American Flamingo Greg Pape Crossroads and Unholy Water Marilene Phipps Birthmark Jon Pineda Threshold Jennifer Richter On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year Lee Ann Roripaugh Year of the Snake Lee Ann Roripaugh Misery Prefigured J. Allyn Rosser In the Absence of Clocks Jacob Shores-Arguello Glaciology Jeffrey Skinner Roam Susan B. A. Somers-Willett The Laughter of Adam and Eve Jason Sommer Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love Wally Swist Persephone in America Alison Townsend Becoming Ebony Patricia Jabbeh Wesley Abide Jake Adam York A Murmuration of Starlings Jake Adam York Persons Unknown Jake Adam York seam poems by tarfia faizullah seam poems by tarfia faizullah poetry “Why call any of it back? Tarfia Faizullah asks in her gorgeous and powerful debut collection, Seam. The answer lies in the notion of legacy, our relationships to the troubled histories we inherit, how a landscape of the past can become a veined geography inside you, another body inside your own demanding reckoning, a just articulation. In poems made more harrowing for what’s not said—the poet’s elegant and wise restraint—we confront the past and its aftermath in the lives of women interrupted by violence and brutality and loss. Memory and the journey back are always fraught with difficulties. It wasn’t enough light to see clearly by, she tells us, but I still turned my face toward it. Faizullah is a poet of brave and unflinching vision and Seam is a beautiful and necessary book.”—Natasha Trethewey, United States Poet Laureate “Seam reaffirms that imagination is the backbone of memory, the muscular fiber that enables us to regrasp our humanity. Raised in West Texas, Faizullah examines the catastrophe that haunted her parents’ life in America and in turn haunted her: the sisters, aunts, and grandmothers raped in Bangladesh in the 1971 liberation war. With patience and immaculate lyric precision, and with sublime attention to language and the courage to interrogate her privilege and curiosity, Faizullah twines a seam where the wounds are re-membered, fingers quivering, spooling, and unspooling what we know of healing. This is a powerful debut, a reminder that some things should perhaps never be forgiven, a poignant record set against forgetfulness.”—Khaled Mattawa “How thin the seam between this fierce book and all the poet’s countrypeople who haven’t lived to read it. Faizullah has made a courageous and shaming book. I hope this book will be translated everywhere.”—Jean Valentine, author of Break the Glass “This is a poetry of news—where brutality, desire, and beauty combine to form a rich testament of what poetry can do: to sing and disturb us awake, and leave us feeling more alive than ever before. Faizullah’s debut collection of poems is simply a triumph—it’s pure fire in your hands.” —Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Lucky Fish Tarfia Faizullah was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1980, and raised in Midland, Texas, by parents who had immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 1978. She has an MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, Blackbird, the Massachusetts Review, the Southern Review, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Ploughshares Cohen...