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artisticauthor's review
5.0
What a genuinely beautiful collection of poetry. From the streams of eloquent language to the dissonant yet harmonic emotions portrayed, Ashes in the Air is a brilliant realisation of suffering and longing. A constant theme throughout the poems is the idea that something is wrong, even though many don't recognise it to be so. The pain is because of the state of things but also in part because it seems like no one notices just how awful everything is. It's not often enough that someone critiques Australia for being the "land of opportunity" in a way that leaves colonisers no room to argue. Alizadeh manages to scrape together the spectrum of human emotion to form an image of what it means to find yourself in a world/society that tells you that you're worthless; it was bittersweet. I found myself looking up definitions for many words yet in spite of the verbosity, the language was warm and felt like having a casual conversation over coffee. Ashes in the Air has made it to the top of my list of poetry collections.
As usual, here are my favourite lines:
I have to be a magician to survive this transitory hell.
- - -
He wants to return to writing, but anger blocks the passage of language from the heart to the page.
- - -
The interminable Western obsession with what Woman wears/shouldn’t wear. ‘Woman’ herself reinvented, characterised by the appearance of body covered or not, modified or not, desirable or not.
- - -
But shouldn’t dire masculinity include courage as well as cruelty, if I’m an adolescent trying to ride both parental love and inner strength? No wonder I’m pain personified.
- - -
Our only sin, the temporary plunge due to woman’s nibbling on the forbidden fruit of equality. But we’re all post-feminists now and deify almighty women who look feminine and achieve like men.
- - -
Chastity implied justice in a world corrupted by desire for anything other than the truth of equality.
- - -
Was it the Real, void without name, without substance or even style? Sick of the aleatory vileness of it all, inside me sited in seclusion, still unknown hovers what I saw: world-infected spirit moved by suffering, nothingness of anything other than fidelity to a truth, ephemeral, innocent-like, drifting from the centre that never could hold, above all things falling apart.
- - -
The Australian dream is the name given to the nightmare for commission housing residents war refugees, economically cleansed by well-behaved shock-troopers versed in legalese.
- - -
I wanted to fight with you against them.
- - -
Never underestimate the undesirability of my love.
- - -
I recognised the void before me.
- - -
Let’s say the terror of demonic punishments was all too real and I can show you the scars.
- - -
We flew from the profane towards a paradise and earthly constellations, stirred by something like the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
- - -
In love’s place all kinds of tragedy verge on atrocity.
- - -
Why did I stray away towards the deep end? I knew I couldn’t swim.
- - -
I’ve never told my father I’d sunk into the infinite emptiness of dying.
- - -
Loneliness bit hard, I thought it was my end or something similar.
- - -
Viscerality of my being affirms the tangibility of pain.
- - -
Why do nerves register the disturbance in the makeshift terrain of memory?
- - -
What if my desire to collate in my mind only the cruelties and not the banal actualities of survival?
- - -
Reality can be unforgiving, too real even if skin forgets the thorns and scars are all in the mind.
As usual, here are my favourite lines:
I have to be a magician to survive this transitory hell.
- - -
He wants to return to writing, but anger blocks the passage of language from the heart to the page.
- - -
The interminable Western obsession with what Woman wears/shouldn’t wear. ‘Woman’ herself reinvented, characterised by the appearance of body covered or not, modified or not, desirable or not.
- - -
But shouldn’t dire masculinity include courage as well as cruelty, if I’m an adolescent trying to ride both parental love and inner strength? No wonder I’m pain personified.
- - -
Our only sin, the temporary plunge due to woman’s nibbling on the forbidden fruit of equality. But we’re all post-feminists now and deify almighty women who look feminine and achieve like men.
- - -
Chastity implied justice in a world corrupted by desire for anything other than the truth of equality.
- - -
Was it the Real, void without name, without substance or even style? Sick of the aleatory vileness of it all, inside me sited in seclusion, still unknown hovers what I saw: world-infected spirit moved by suffering, nothingness of anything other than fidelity to a truth, ephemeral, innocent-like, drifting from the centre that never could hold, above all things falling apart.
- - -
The Australian dream is the name given to the nightmare for commission housing residents war refugees, economically cleansed by well-behaved shock-troopers versed in legalese.
- - -
I wanted to fight with you against them.
- - -
Never underestimate the undesirability of my love.
- - -
I recognised the void before me.
- - -
Let’s say the terror of demonic punishments was all too real and I can show you the scars.
- - -
We flew from the profane towards a paradise and earthly constellations, stirred by something like the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
- - -
In love’s place all kinds of tragedy verge on atrocity.
- - -
Why did I stray away towards the deep end? I knew I couldn’t swim.
- - -
I’ve never told my father I’d sunk into the infinite emptiness of dying.
- - -
Loneliness bit hard, I thought it was my end or something similar.
- - -
Viscerality of my being affirms the tangibility of pain.
- - -
Why do nerves register the disturbance in the makeshift terrain of memory?
- - -
What if my desire to collate in my mind only the cruelties and not the banal actualities of survival?
- - -
Reality can be unforgiving, too real even if skin forgets the thorns and scars are all in the mind.
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