Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s Malak is a splendidly written book that considers where metaphysical themes and elliptical lyric intersect. At its core, this collection inquires about spiritual inheritance and relationships through the skillful deployment of images that wrap the reader in their clutch. Sadre-Orafai’s poems, rooted in memory, mourning and honor, are hauntingly surreal yet solidly material.
Airea D. Matthews, author of simulacra
In Malak, Jenny Sadre-Orafai takes your hand and walks you through magnificent worlds where futures appear in coffee grounds and become a “language of residue,” into the habitats of snakes, foxes, and girls, and a dream can appear nine times. Familial cycles and cultural identities are rendered in enchanting images and lines. Jenny Sadre-Orafai makes the tales of bloodlines fresh and the wild earth new.
Wendy C. Ortiz, author of Excavation and Bruja
Invoking talisman, totem, fortune, and spell, Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s Malak abides in the rich world of lineage and divination. Listening back to the potent augury of the poet’s grandmother and forward to the intuition of her daughter, these are poems that move in circular time enacting “how our whole gold life is happening.” Malak makes a startling lyric music with its nested selves and layered voices, its locks and keys and teeth in the dark, polishing to an ontological shine what we know and what can be retrieved from the future.
Jennifer K. Sweeney, author of Little Spells
“Jenny Sadre-Orafai makes the tales of bloodlines fresh and the wild earth new.”
Additional Praise
Tim Lynch interviews Jenny at Tell Tell Poetry
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens reviews Malak at Agape Editions
Sivan Butler-Rotholz reviews Malak at As It Ought to Be
Michelle Khouri interviews Jenny at The Cultured Podcast
José Angel Araguz interviews Jenny and reviews Malak at The Friday Influence
Anna Sandy reviews Malak in the Winter 2018 issue of Bone Bouquet
Paige Sullivan reviews Malak at The Bind
Sarala Estruch reviews Malak at Poetry School
Emery Duffey reviews Malak at The New Southern Fugitives
Lois Reitzes interviews Jenny on Atlanta's NPR show City Lights
