Look: Poems

In this astounding debut, Solmaz Sharif assembles her family's and her own fragmented narratives in the aftermath of warfare. These poems point to the ways violence is conducted against our language. Throughout this book are words and phrases lifted from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms; their seamless inclusion exposes the euphemisms deployed to sterilize and control language. But Sharif refuses to accept this as given, and turns it on its perpetrators: 'Let it matter what we call a thing,' she writes.