Description
In this affecting poetry debut, Charif Shanahan explores what it means to be fully human in our wounded and divided world. In poised yet unrelenting lyric poems, Shanahan--queer and mixed-race--confronts the challenges of a complex cultural inheritance, informed by colonialism and his mother's immigration to the United States from Morocco, navigating racial constructs, sexuality, family, and the globe in search of "who we are to each other . . . who we are to ourselves."
With poems that weave from Marrakesh to Zurich to London, through history to the present day, this book is, on its surface, an uncompromising exploration of identity in personal and collective terms. Yet the collection is, most deeply, about intimacy and love, the inevitability of human separation and the challenge of human connection. Urging us to reexamine our own place in the broader human tapestry, Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing announces the arrival of a powerful and necessary new voice.
About the Author
Charif Shanahan was born in the Bronx in 1983 to an Irish-American father and a Moroccan mother. He holds an MFA in poetry from New York University. His poems have appeared in Baffler, Boston Review, Callaloo, Literary Hub, New Republic, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Cave Canem, the Frost Place, the Fulbright Program, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and Stanford University, where he is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry.
Reviews
Shanahan breaks fresh ground in this painfully raw debut, dissecting the self in its cultural context via speakers who fearlessly claim both vulnerability and culpability. . . . Shanahan's is a vital and profound new voice, and his eyebrow-raising interrogation leaves the reader with afterimages 'as the eye/ after the shock flash/ still sees/ the lightning.'" - Publisher's Weekly
Book Information
ISBN 9780809335770
Author Charif Shanahan
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Southern Illinois University Press
Publisher Southern Illinois University Press
Weight(grams) 174g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 10mm
With poems that weave from Marrakesh to Zurich to London, through history to the present day, this book is, on its surface, an uncompromising exploration of identity in personal and collective terms. Yet the collection is, most deeply, about intimacy and love, the inevitability of human separation and the challenge of human connection. Urging us to reexamine our own place in the broader human tapestry, Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing announces the arrival of a powerful and necessary new voice.
About the Author
Charif Shanahan was born in the Bronx in 1983 to an Irish-American father and a Moroccan mother. He holds an MFA in poetry from New York University. His poems have appeared in Baffler, Boston Review, Callaloo, Literary Hub, New Republic, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Cave Canem, the Frost Place, the Fulbright Program, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and Stanford University, where he is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry.
Reviews
Shanahan breaks fresh ground in this painfully raw debut, dissecting the self in its cultural context via speakers who fearlessly claim both vulnerability and culpability. . . . Shanahan's is a vital and profound new voice, and his eyebrow-raising interrogation leaves the reader with afterimages 'as the eye/ after the shock flash/ still sees/ the lightning.'" - Publisher's Weekly
Book Information
ISBN 9780809335770
Author Charif Shanahan
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Southern Illinois University Press
Publisher Southern Illinois University Press
Weight(grams) 174g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 10mm
