Skip to content

Novel Niche

Est. 2010. Queer & Transgressive Close Readings from the Ungovernable & Dangerous Margins

  • Review Archives
  • Caribbean Literary + Cultural Blogroll
  • Story Sundays
  • Charting Children’s Literature
  • Reading Challenges & Projects
  • Review Policy + Contact Form

Tag: Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler

“Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler” – Kaveh Akbar

On August 5, 2018 By Shivanee @ Novel NicheIn Other Kinds of MenLeave a comment
9789060195_f07206b527_k
Image: The Sun Voyager, posted at Flickr by Fougerouse Arnaud under a Creative Commons License.

It may happen that when you are a small being, engaged in the act of worship, God or someone like her will enter you through the top of your head. What does that say about God, about prayer, about the permeable nature of your skull?

Kaveh Akbar’s “Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler” is lit with the kind of speculative flicker you don’t necessarily expect. All the same (or more so because it’s not expected) it removes the top of your head. How do you get past these lines without being blown open by wonder, by the uncanny certainty that you’re seeing the universe from a startling new vantage? “When I wake, I / ask God to slide into my head quickly before I do. As a boy, I spit a / peach pit onto my father’s prayer rug and immediately / it turned into a locust.”

What I love about this poem is that it asks me to consider position. Do we see better when we’re knelt on a prayer mat, or suspended like a tipsy ghost over a party, or “stopped in a lobby for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres”? What does time make of us, and enact in us, at every stage of our flimsy human motions? Surely what makes us weak in one vantage is what makes us strong in another. Surely understanding this is part of the locust’s charge in the poem: to “devour the vast fields of my ignorance”.

In the final line of the poem, I find myself contemplating ultimate stasis and perpetual motion: “It’s difficult / to be anything at / all with the whole world right here for the having.” It may be that the universe turns us giddily, so quick that we sense it all calmly amidst the wing-clatter of locusts.

Read “Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler” here.
Kaveh Akbar’s first collection of poems, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published in 2017 by Alice James Books.

bon voyage.jpgThis is the fifth installment of Other Kinds of Men, a speculative poetry reader in honour of Ursula K. Le Guin. Speculative writing, which encompasses the major genres of mythology, fantasy and science fiction, has often given voice to the most relentless and ungovernable urgencies of this age, and any other. Le Guin understood this: that to write about dragons, ice worlds and other seeming oddities was, in fact, to write into the messy, riotous complexity of ourselves. Here’s to dragons, and here’s to Ursula.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Print
  • More

Like this:

Like Loading...

Sheaves upon sheaves of novel musings straight to your mail!

Join 336 other followers

Novel Niche, Socially

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Goodreads

The Eternal TBR

Popular Posts

  • "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
    "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
  • "Telemachus" - Ocean Vuong
    "Telemachus" - Ocean Vuong
  • "Di Great Insohreckshan" - Linton Kwesi Johnson
    "Di Great Insohreckshan" - Linton Kwesi Johnson
  • 35. Is Just a Movie by Earl Lovelace
    35. Is Just a Movie by Earl Lovelace
  • "The Love of a Good Woman" by Alice Munro
    "The Love of a Good Woman" by Alice Munro
  • "The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar" - Danez Smith
    "The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar" - Danez Smith
  • 12. Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy
    12. Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy
  • Duane Allicock's Thoughts on The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng
    Duane Allicock's Thoughts on The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng
  • "Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country" - Angel Nafis
    "Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country" - Angel Nafis
  • A Week in Walcott • "The Schooner Flight"
    A Week in Walcott • "The Schooner Flight"

Recent Comments

  • Andrew Blackman on 39. Daughters of Empire by Lakshmi Persaud
  • Revolutionary Mothering in Novel Niche - PM Press on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • Almah LaVon Rice-Faina on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • thecornocopiaallotment on “All Hallows” – Louise Glück
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • “Mirror, Reflect Our Unknown Selves” – Tlotlo Tsamaase | Novel Niche: A Place for Books on “Daphne” – Roberto Rodriguez-Estrada
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “Can You Speak English?” – Natalie Wee

New at Novel Niche

  • and i am the man / laughing: “Connel, Morning”
  • and i am the man / laughing: “I Have No Name for my Father”
  • and i am the man / laughing: “The Plural of Me”
  • and i am the man / laughing: “Waiting for your Gun”
  • and i am the man / laughing — “I Want to Bite”

Categories

  • A Week in Walcott (7)
  • and i am the man / laughing (5)
  • Bookends (24)
    • Author Interviews and Features (3)
    • Bocas Lit Fest (5)
    • Guest Blogs (2)
    • Literary Events (1)
    • Literary Letters (1)
    • Novel Gift Exchanges (4)
    • Reading Ruminations (2)
    • Yourself In Books (2)
  • Charting Children's Literature (4)
  • Give Feral Thanks – A Mary Oliver Primer (3)
  • Guest Reviews (6)
  • Here for the Unicorn Blood (29)
  • Miscellanities (1)
  • NetGalley (2)
  • Other Kinds of Men (26)
  • Puncheon and Vetiver (31)
  • Reading Challenges (11)
    • British Book Challenge 2011 (4)
    • Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 (5)
  • Requested Reviews (4)
  • Reviews 2010 (9)
  • Reviews 2011 (16)
  • Reviews 2012 (17)
  • Reviews 2013 (3)
  • Reviews 2014 (3)
  • Reviews 2016 (1)
  • Story by Story Reading (1)
  • Story Sundays (14)
  • Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section (8)

Archives

Novel Niche's Eleventh Anniversary!April 23, 2021
Happy Eleventh Birthday, Novel Niche!

Tagnificent!

Alexandra Fuller Andre Bagoo A Queer POC Poetry Reader A Speculative Poetry Reader A Week in Walcott Bocas Lit Fest 2012 Bocas Lit Fest 2013 Brandon O'Brien British Book Challenge 2011 Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 Carol Shields Catherynne M. Valente Charting Children's Literature Chatto & Windus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Chronicle Books Close Reading Colin Robinson Cormac McCarthy Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné Derek Walcott Feature/Interview Fiction Fruit of the Lemon Give Feral Thanks Gregory Maguire Guest Review Half of a Yellow Sun HarperCollins Here for the Unicorn Blood Is Just a Movie Jason McIntyre K. Jared Hosein Karen Lord Lisa Allen-Agostini Littletown Secrets Loretta Collins Klobah Mary Oliver Memoir Midnight in Your Arms Monique Roffey Morgan Kelly NaPoWriMo NetGalley Non-Fiction Novel Novel Gifts Olive Senior Other Kinds of Men Peepal Tree Press Picador Poetry Potbake Productions Puncheon and Vetiver Rajiv Mohabir Reading Ruminations Requested Review Review Rosamond S. King Shara McCallum Sherman Alexie Short Story Collection Simon & Schuster Sonia Farmer Stephen King Story Sunday The Allen Prize for Young Writers The Road Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section Unless Vintage/Anchor Books Vintage Books Xiaolu Guo You Have You Father Hard Head Yourself in Books

Support T&T’s Local Indie Bookseller!

Translate Novel Niche

Novel Niche Tweets

My Tweets
Creative Commons License
This work by Shivanee Ramlochan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Novel Niche
    • Join 336 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Novel Niche
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    %d bloggers like this: