Sweet Mothing : Prose & Poems & Plays – Kazim Ali

Description

In Sweet Nothing Kazim Ali finds, just beneath the details of daily life, the presence of spiritual reality. A corner of the street, a gesture of the hand, the pattern on a rug, all act as evidence of a generative emptiness. Sweet Nothing documents those details in a language of charmed engagement, and claims language, whether prayer, monologue, or poem, as our most prized of veils over the abyss, as the beauty that grows from sweet nothing and the technique of linking one life with another. Ali’s passionate attention explores the lyric truth of being alive, moment by moment.

My body is my prayer rug, my spine beads
on a string, inside my mouth is that book,
the one I am writing.

Kazim Ali writes in, across, through, and against multiple genres, including poetry, essay, memoir, fiction, journalism, translation, and the genre-queer. A former yoga teacher, lobbyist, and grass roots organizer, he currently lives in the traditional lands of the Kumeyaay people, where he chares the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.