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Malak
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Malak is consumed with magic and safety from impending doom and a Persian grandmother’s hobby of predicting one’s future by reading coffee grounds. Sadre-Orafai explores the effects dreams and superstitions can have on people when futures are predicted, signs are translated, and language is contested. The poems excavate the past to make sense of loss and inheritances. Popu
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I was privileged enough to receive a copy of Malak in a Goodreads giveaway, and I was delighted!
Malak hears futures in cups the way we
hear oceans in shells. Families we know rush
through Turkish coffee, scalding their throats.
They wear dark stripes down their tongues like
Plains garter snakes, leave enough to
drip when propped against the counter.
A very cohesive poetry collection, tells the history of a family, juxtaposing their pain and sacrifice with rich fantasy and prophetic foretellings. ...more
Malak hears futures in cups the way we
hear oceans in shells. Families we know rush
through Turkish coffee, scalding their throats.
They wear dark stripes down their tongues like
Plains garter snakes, leave enough to
drip when propped against the counter.
A very cohesive poetry collection, tells the history of a family, juxtaposing their pain and sacrifice with rich fantasy and prophetic foretellings. ...more
(I blurbed this book.)
In Malak, Jenny Sadre-Orafai takes your hand and walks you through magnificent worlds where futures appear in coffee grounds and become a "language of residue", into the habitats of snakes, foxes, and girls, and a dream can appear nine times. Familial cycles and cultural identities are rendered in enchanting images and lines. Jenny Sadre-Orafai makes the tales of bloodlines fresh and the wild earth new.
In Malak, Jenny Sadre-Orafai takes your hand and walks you through magnificent worlds where futures appear in coffee grounds and become a "language of residue", into the habitats of snakes, foxes, and girls, and a dream can appear nine times. Familial cycles and cultural identities are rendered in enchanting images and lines. Jenny Sadre-Orafai makes the tales of bloodlines fresh and the wild earth new.
I read this in one day: I didn't want it to end and I didn't want to finish it in one day but the poems put you into a hypnotic trance. They are rich, magical, visionary, both a love story and a ghost story woven through surreal images as the speaker interrogates the memory of her Persian grandmother who predicted the future through coffee grinds. Nostalgic, mournful, and dreamy, these poems are excellently crafted treasures and I have no doubt I'll be snuggling up with this book again.
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Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and Malak. Her poetry has appeared in Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, The Cortland Review, Hotel Amerika, The Pinch, and other journals. Her prose has appeared in Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, South Loop Review, Fourteen Hills, The Collagist, and other journals. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor
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