About Kazim
Kazim Ali is the author of two books of poetry, The Far Mosque (Alice James Books) and the forthcoming The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions) as well as the novel Quinn's Passage. His poetry and essays have appeared widely in such periodicals as jubilat, American Poetry Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Colorado Review, and American Poet. Five essays are archived at the Poetry Foundation website, and a regular column is running in American Poetry Review. Kazim co-founded Nightboat Books and currently teaches at Oberlin College and at Stonecoast, the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine.
Kazim's essay "Poetry is Dangerous" has been published on hundreds of websites internationally and can be read here.
Short videos of Kazim reading from The Fortieth Day are posted here.
CD of Poetry and Music:
Find out why Sharon Gannon, founder of Jivamukti Yoga, says, "Kazim Ali has been kissed by the lips of eternity and managed to remain lucid enough to speak of the wonder."
5 tracks are early (very early) versions of poems from The Far Mosque; the other 5 tracks are previously unpublished poems. This CD watermusicbreath was conceived as performance art and includes musical accompaniment. It was recorded in 2003 several years before the release of The Far Mosque and is influenced by Kazim's interest in experimental musical forms, including Yoko Ono, Sheila Chandra, and Alice Coltrane. $15 includes shipping.
Broadside
There are only fifty copies of this hand-printed letterpressed broadside including the poems "Morning Prayer," "Afternoon Prayer" and the close couplet of "Interrupted Letter," all from The Fortieth Day. Each broadside has been numbered and signed by Kazim Ali and the printer, Kseniya Thomas of Thomas Printers. $50 includes shipping.
**write to info@kazimali.com with your mailing address if you are interested in either the CD or the broadside.
Stay tuned for the release of The Fortieth Day: poems by Kazim Ali to be published by BOA Editions in spring 2008
In The Fortieth Day, every poem keeps an exquisite and undistracted vigil, wholly devoted to the contours of each moment. These vigils are rewarded amply, as Time itself unfolds its secrets to Ali. To read this book is to see new colors in a new depth.
--Donald Revell
Kazim Ali lets the self unfold amidst play and prayer, wonder and language. Many of Ali’s poems proceed sound by sound, the syllables themselves tiny devis voicing to the poet, and to the reader, where next to track a fugitive god.
--Jeff Davis,
author of The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices for Authentic Writing
Kazim Ali has found the underwater, above-atmosphere, between-the-spaces, time-abolishing secret of poetry, that it’s everywhere and nowhere, by listening to what lies just barely hidden under the heart. These poems, subtle rather than obscure, woven rather than proclaimed, well up naturally, take hold, then drift away. Spiritual and sensual, questing more horizontally than vertically, the poems of The Fortieth Day approach and often approximate pure music. He whispers into our ear, and tunes our hearing to a nobler resonance.
--Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
