The Light That Burns Us (2nd Edition)

The English-language debut of one of Greece's most radical poetic voices, now in an expanded edition. Jazra Khaleed's poetry is electrifying, an unapologetic indictment of the wrongs faced by immigrants, by a rudderless young European generation, by leftist activists in a Greece and a Europe blighted by neoliberal policies of deregulation and privatization. Born in Chechnya in 1979, Khaleed is a poet who seems very Greek and not Greek at all; his language is sharp, refined, and controlled, with elegant rhythms and contemporary street speech that often has an undertow of a sophisticated language with moments of Byzantine and New Testament Greek. In his poetry there is a power, erudition, and control that Greek readers have trouble equating with a man named Jazra. The poems are always political, vehement, written at times from a very personal perspective, and at others from that of an objective outsider. It is a poetry that tears the untroubled reader back to a reality that may well be dangerous. || "Jazra Khaleed's razor-wire-sharp poems are indispensable missives from other war zones to our contemporary moment of mass protests, campus occupations, and, as Darwish termed it, states of siege. A vital voice for the current age." --MARK NOWAK || "From cut-up experiment to lyrical address, from poems as forceful as a hurled stone to poems that speak tenderly for what's been lost to capitalist colonization, the range in this book speaks to Khaleed's hostility toward the violence of homogenizing forces, whether in literature or in life." --TONY IANTOSCA || "¿an explosive cadence¿ Khaleed's sentiment toward the would-be aesthetes seems clear: 'Fuck off, flower poets.'" --DAVID WALLACE, THE NEW YORKER || "¿agitated and delirious and necessary." --LOTTE L.S., MUTE || "Khaleed stands up to fascism by writing and performing Greek-language poetry that is unmatched in technical bravura, emotional depth, and political urgency. He performs his poetry at a lightning clip-so fast the Nazis can barely keep up, let alone talk back-a hip-hop emcee in a fever." --MAX RITVO, LA REVIEW OF BOOKS || Translation. Political Poetry. Modern Greek Studies. Anarchism Studies.