“I am the Real,” is the ecstatic statement often associated with the early Sufi poet Mansur al-Hallaj. In popular narratives about Hallaj this declaration of absolute unity with God is what led to his execution in Abbasid Baghdad. Other accounts attribute it to Hallaj’s directive to build a symbolic Ka’ba in one’s home if they are not able to perform the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. While Hallaj’s biographical details are often wrapped in myth what is clear is the polarizing position he played within the Islamic tradition. Hallaj wrote prodigiously but it was his poetry that drew particular reservations even among his peers.Carl W. Ernst, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, makes this poetry available to the contemporary reader in his new volume of translations, Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr (Northwestern University Press, 2018). Ernst contextualizes Hallaj’s poetry within various intellectual and social contexts and renders them in clear beautiful language. While the poetry can be read on its own for its aesthetic value the volume overall helps us understand Hallaj’s complex system of thought through his own words. In our conversation we discuss the intellectual and social context of Hallaj’s Baghdad, his textual legacy, his feelings about the emerging Sufi practices and norms, how the poems’ original audiences encountered them, Hallaj’s metaphysics, sermons, riddles, and love poems, how to translate Arabic poetry, Louis Massignon, and the relationship between Rumi and Hallaj. You can hear more about Carl Ernst’s background and research in our previous conversation about his book How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide, with Select Translations.Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Eliza Griswold writes in Snow in Rome, "we hate being human,/depleted by absence." In her latest poetry collection, If Men, Then (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), Griswold grapples with a world that is fracturing at its foundation. In this series of poems, all at once dark. humorous and questioning, the author moves from the familiar to the unjust to hope with a keen eye. She guides readers through a world that at times strips the humanness from our bones with embedded violence and disconnection, but also calls for us to reconnect by reminding us to be a bridge out among the flames.Eliza Griswold is the author of an acclaimed first book of poems, Wideawake Field, as well as The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, which won the 2011 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Her translations of Afghan women’s folk poems, I Am the Beggar of the World, was awarded the 2015 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She has held fellowships from the New America Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Harvard University, and in 2010 the American Academy in Rome awarded her the Rome Prize for her poems. Griswold, currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University, is also the author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2018, one of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction for 2018, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction in 2019.Athena Dixon is a NE Ohio native, poet, essayist, and editor. Her essay collection, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, is forthcoming from Split/Lip Press (2020). Athena is also the author of No God in This Room, a poetry chapbook (Argus House Press). Her poetry is included in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books). Learn more at www.athenadixon.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Franny Choi’s book-length collection of poetry, Soft Science (Alice James Books 2019), explores queer, Asian American femininity through the lens of robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence. As she notes in this interview, “this book is a study of softness,” exploring feeling, vulnerability, and desire. How can you be tender and still survive in a hard and violent world? What does it mean to have desire when you yourself are made into an object of desire? What does it mean to have a body that bears the weight of history? Choi’s poetry contemplates such questions through the technology of poetic form.“Once, an animal with hands like mine learned to break a seed with two stones – one hard and one soft.Once, a scientist in Britain asked: Can machines think? He built a machine, taught it to read ghosts, and a new kind of ghost was born.At Disneyland, I watched a robot dance the macarena. Everyone clapped, and the clapping, too, was a technology.I once made my mouth a technology of softness. I listened carefully as I drank. I made the tools fuck in my mouth – okay, we can say pickle if it’s easier to hear – until they birthed new ones. What I mean is, I learned.”— from “A Brief History of Cyborgs” by Franny ChoiFranny Choi is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science (from Alice James Books) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press). She is a Kundiman Fellow, a 2019 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, and a graduate of the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers Program. She is a Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow at Williams College and co-hosts the podcast VS alongside fellow Dark Noise Collective member Danez Smith.Andrea Blythe is a cohost of the New Books in Poetry podcast. She is the author of Your Molten Heart / A Seed to Hatch (2018) a collection of erasure poems, and coauthor of Every Girl Becomes the Wolf (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a collaborative chapbook written with Laura Madeline Wiseman. She is a cohost of the New Books in Poetry podcast and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association and the Horror Writers Association. Find her online at andreablythe.com or on Twitter and Instagram @AndreaBlythe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities and the future of criticism. The book is packed with interview material, coupled with accessible and easy to follow theoretical interventions, creating a text that will be of interest to social sciences, humanities, and general readers alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 The Prophet is book that’s changed people’s lives. It is a deceptively simple book, but it contains a radical insight. “Of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving in your souls?” What can a book teach us that we cannot know ourselves?To detect this thing inside of us we must break through convention: our escape into social habits, religious and political doctrine, the comforting approval of others, and the truisms and clichés we take for wisdom. And even once we realize that something is “moving in our souls,” Gibran warns us, we tend to repress this insight by submitting to outside authorities to give it a name, a label, or a theory. By turning to religion or other people’s teachings, we dodging the challenge of taking charge of our own conditions, and thus of our freedom.I spoke with Glenn Wallis, a renowned scholar of Buddhism, translator and teacher who has published The Dhammapada, Basic Teachings of the Buddha, and a Critique of Western Buddhism, and who runs Incite Seminars in Philadelphia. Glenn had first read The Prophet when he was 16 and it changed his life profoundly. He then forgot about the book and even dismissed it for decades, until I persuaded him, pleading three times, to reconsider it. This conversation is as much about The Prophet as about the things that move us deeply when we’re younger but which we then, in growing up, learn to dismiss as adolescent. I’d like to think that re-reading a book sometimes lets us rekindle our youthful passion to ignite our lives yet once more. The conversation also led Glenn and myself to co-author an introduction to a new and beautiful edition of The Prophet, published together with The Forerunner and The Madman, by Warbler Classics.Uli Baer is a professor at New York University. He is also the host of the excellent podcast "Think About It" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Becca Klaver writes in the poem 'Hooliganism Was the Charge,' It offered reassurance which said, “You are not alone; I can hear you.” Her forthcoming collection, Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press 2020), reminds us that no matter the digital distance between us we are never quite alone. A collection that both casts and dispels the bindings ever present via social media, patriarchy, and our own paths to growth, this collection allows readers to blur the lines between our sometimes carefully curated online lives and the magical beings we truly are.Part spell book and a rumination on technology, Klaver explores womanhood and feminism from a distance and up close. These poems ask for us to find a remembrance and a reconnecting. She asks in the poem Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie, what is burning in our little hearts?, and dares us to tear down what we think we know to find what we feel.Becca Klaver is the author of two books of poetry—LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016)—and several chapbooks. Becca was a founding editor of Switchback Books and is currently coediting, with Arielle Greenberg, the anthology Electric Gurlesque. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Fence, jubilat, and in Poem-A-Day and Verse Daily. She was also the editor of Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants and is cohost, with Lauren Besser, of the podcast The Real Housewives of Bohemia. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she is a graduate of the University of Southern California (BA), Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and Rutgers University (PhD). She is the Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College and currently lives in Iowa City, IA.Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is Founder of Linden Avenue Literary Journal, which she launched in 2012. Athena’s work has appeared in various publications both online and in print. She is the author of No God In This Room, a poetry chapbook, published by Argus House Press. Her work also appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books). She writes, edits, and resides in Philadelphia. Learn more about Athena here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Joyce Ashuntantang talks about her experiences as a traveler and a poet, from her childhood Cameroon to her years studying in Great Britain and the United States. Ashuntantang is a professor of English at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. She is the author of many works of poetry, including A Basket of Flaming Ashes.Ashuntantang is an extraordinary weaver of words who showcases vivid pictures that compete with 3D simulation. Her greatest asset is her use of the beautiful traditional Cameroonian anchor that evokes folk tales with its moonlight romance and glory. You feel, laugh, weep, shiver, wonder, and hail the triumphant spirit of the persona as it navigates African postcolonial and global experiences with the melancholy of an exile who is purposeful, strategic, and a lot of fun.Michael F. Robinson is professor of history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. He's the author of The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and The Lost White Tribe: Scientists, Explorers, and the Theory that Changed a Continent (Oxford University Press, 2016). He's also the host of the podcast Time to Eat the Dogs, a weekly podcast about science, history, and exploration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Winner of the Walt Whitman Award, Emily Skaja’s Brute (Graywolf Press, 2019) is a stunning collection of poetry that navigates the dark corridors of trauma found at the end of an abusive relationship. “Everyone if we’re going to talk about love please we have to talk about violence,” writes Skaja in the poem “remarkable the litter of birds.” She indeed talks about the intersections of both love and violence, evoking a range of emotional experiences ranging from sorrow and loss to rage, guilt, hope, self discovery, and reinvention. These poems reflect the present moment — ripe with cell phones, social media, and technologies that shift the way humans interact with each other — while maintaining a mythic quality, with the speaker feeling like a character struggling to survive in a surreal fairytale world.Skaja recommends: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Russel, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden, and Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.Emily Skaja was born and raised in rural Illinois. Her first book, BRUTE, won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets (and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019). She holds an MFA from Purdue University and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Cincinnati. Emily is the recipient of a 2019 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poems have been published in Best New Poets, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, FIELD, and Gulf Coast, among other journals. She is also the Poetry Co-Editor of Southern Indiana Review, and she lives in Memphis.You can join New Books in Poetry in a discussion of this episode on Shuffle by joining here.Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. She is the author of Your Molten Heart / A Seed to Hatch (2018) a collection of erasure poems created from the pages of Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyers, and coauthor of Every Girl Becomes the Wolf (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a collaborative chapbook written with Laura Madeline Wiseman. She is a cohost of the New Books in Poetry podcast and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association and the Horror Writers Association. Learn more at: www.andreablythe.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it.How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to UP editors early and often. And she explains how! Listen in.Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Tamara J. Madison, both on the page and in voice, is magical. In her most recent collection, Threed, This Road Not Damascus (Trio House, 2019), she seamlessly bridges the gap between past and present while remaining grounded in the here and now. Via her use of religion, familial history, and rhythm she is able to give voice to those women who oft times were forced to remain silent in order to survive. It is through her poetry that these women, and those still to come, are allowed to be wholly free. Madison creates a new mythology here. A mythology that begins to lay the groundwork for us to create the worlds in which we want to move. She leaves us with the lingering sense that the makings of the universe are in our hands. All we need to do is mold it and name it.Tamara J. Madison is an internationally traveled author, poet, performer, and editor currently teaching as a professor of English and Creative Writing at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Her critical and creative works have been published in various journals and magazines including Poetry International, Tidal Basin Review, Web del Sol, and Linden Avenue. She has also been published in several anthologies: Temba Tupu, Check the Rhyme, Seattle Poets and Photographers, and SisterFire. Her most recent publication is a full-length poetry collection, Threed, This Road Not Damascus. An earlier manuscript of the book was short-listed for the 2015 Willow Books Literature Award. She is the author of Collard County, A Collection of Short Stories. Her collection, Kentucky Curdled (poetry and essay) is available in paperback, on Kindle , and poetry audiobook.A consummate performance poet and spoken word artist, Tamara has performed for numerous stages and television. Her melodic poetry and spoken word are featured in the award winning, Naked Voice currently available on CD Baby. She has also performed and recorded as bilingual vocalist and poet (French/English) with Juba Collective of Chicago under master musician and composer, Kahil El’Zabar. To contact her for readings, workshops, and updates, visit her home on the web at here on Instagram @tamarajmadison.Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is Founder of Linden Avenue Literary Journal, which she launched in 2012. Athena's work has appeared in various publications both online and in print. She is the author of No God In This Room, a poetry chapbook, published by Argus House Press. Her work also appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books). She writes, edits, and resides in Philadelphia. Learn more about Athena here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry