Melanie's Reviews > Martyr!

The trouble with Kaveh Akbar is that I heard his voice first.

I heard him speak. At crowded bookstores, on podcasts, staring into the eyes of smitten interlocutors with the kind of attentiveness one would pay for, his heartbreaking smile swallowing his entire face.

Kaveh Akbar really pays attention. Like all great poets do.

I watched him talk with his hands, his knees bobbing up and down with nervousness and excitement, trying to stay in his seat, the brilliance of his brain on full display, zigzagging wildly inside his organs before making it to his lips.

An artist, a man-child consumed with a hunger that is hard to miss, a heart so big it could not live anywhere else but on his sleeve. Language just needed to catch up.

And oh, does it try here. Addiction, identity, martyrdom, art, grief, friendship, alienation, recovery, creativity, American-ness, Iranian-ness, growing up, love, purpose. Longing, longing, longing. This beautiful oddity of a book pulses with Akbar’s high-octane brain and sensitivity, feeling its way around like tentacles. Waiting for language to catch up.

And somehow, language fails. But not because it isn’t wonderful and inventive and razor-sharp wicked smart. Language fails because the beauty of THAT life, of what is, of what Akbar knows is there, that which can sometimes be caught on film or photography, will always stay out of reach of… words.

Dreams are one of the most mysterious and bewitching things that we experience and yet they fall flat as soon as we speak them. So does our sense of identity. So does the fragile hollow that we’re all trying to fill.

The trouble with Kaveh Akbar is that I heard his voice first.

And how can you not love him.