Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile
Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile
$16.00
by Hussain Ahmed
Paperback / 88p. / Poetry
ISBN 978-1939568-52-6
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Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile explores the role of silence in a time of war.
The war Hussain Ahmed accounts here is both physical and psychological, and the survivor within these poems uses his voice as a way to tell the stories of those who were lost. The experimental poems track grief as it extends from the personal “I” to a larger community that grapples to find connections with places that are no longer in existence. These are poems that must resist the danger of fear in order to ensure that the victims are not forgotten, resulting in a powerful result is a collection of survival stories that insist on being told.
Praise for Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile
“In a soliloquy a voice speaks alone, and yet this voice is never lonely, so deeply and committedly does it speak to a listener or reader. I felt trusted and welcomed into intimacy by these deeply lyrical and musical poems. “I was born to make a map,” the poet says. I feel grateful to have it in my hand.”
“Hussain Ahmed’s Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile sings in prayer, remembrance, and embrace. These poems, of a survivor seeking to honor the lost, undo and remake language into a new apparatus with which to love and carry the dead. These poems are caretakers of memory, lush and in love with the world, even in war, even in grief. ‘The moon shines brightest during the curfew,’ Ahmed writes. ‘There are more birds in the sky during the war.’”
“Soliloquy is a book of poetry that inhabits a transitional realm that is both emotional and physical. The poems contain a familiar yet transcending character, as though they recognize the wounds we bear during our daily encounters yet do not perceive. Hussain re-imagines grief, encouraging us to see the aesthetics of anxiety.”
