<b>*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION*</b><br> <b>*AN <i>OBSERVER</i> BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021*</b><br> <b>**Selected as one of <i>TIME</i>'s 100 Must-Read Books of 2021**</b><br> <b><br> 'Kaveh Akbar is the sorcerer's sorcerer, masterful in the way he wields language . . . Profound and singular, smart and sad and funny, but most of all truth's beauty and beauty's truth sung . . . We need <i>Pilgrim Bell</i>. We need Kaveh Akbar' TOMMY ORANGE</b><br> <br> With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar's second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body's question, "<i>what now shall I repair?</i>" Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance - the infinite void of a loved one's absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation - teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness.<br> <br> Richly crafted and generous, <i>Pilgrim Bell</i>'s linguistic rigour is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives - resonant, revelatory, and holy.<br> <br> America, I warn you, if you invite me into your home<br> I will linger,<br> <br> kissing my beloveds frankly,<br> pulling up radishes<br> and capping all your pens.<br> <br> There are no good kings,<br> only burning palaces.<br> <br> -<b>from 'The Palace'</b><br> <b><br></b><b>'Very few living writers write so achingly toward God as Kaveh Akbar . . . each of the poems in this collection finds its target' LAUREN GROFF</b>