Coming Soon: Elegy for My Tongue, by Saba Husain
Praise for Elegy for My Tongue
In Saba Husain’s Elegy for My Tongue, the everyday is always in conversation with the enormous—with the complexities of immigration, national identity, mortality, language and faith. The simplicity of a grandmother helping her grandson study for a test becomes a meditation on family history, discovering how “paper remembers a steaming cup of black tea/ with cardamom and milk, / and the glide of a fountain pen.” Or a clothesline whipping in the wind, “flinging clothes stiff from the sun/ into the air like/ mammoth butterflies,” leads to the knowledge of the private self within the enormity of family and history, the self that almost wants to be revealed. This book spans nations and languages, generations, and the tiniest moments of insight and discovery. Saba Husain writes with musical intelligence, with grace and clarity that seem almost effortless. This is a terrific book, one that I will return to with pleasure.
—Kevin Prufer, The Fears
In Saba Husain’s Elegy for My Tongue, the everyday is always in conversation with the enormous—with the complexities of immigration, national identity, mortality, language and faith. The simplicity of a grandmother helping her grandson study for a test becomes a meditation on family history, discovering how “paper remembers a steaming cup of black tea/ with cardamom and milk, / and the glide of a fountain pen.” Or a clothesline whipping in the wind, “flinging clothes stiff from the sun/ into the air like/ mammoth butterflies,” leads to the knowledge of the private self within the enormity of family and history, the self that almost wants to be revealed. This book spans nations and languages, generations, and the tiniest moments of insight and discovery. Saba Husain writes with musical intelligence, with grace and clarity that seem almost effortless. This is a terrific book, one that I will return to with pleasure.
—Kevin Prufer, The Fears
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Saba Husain is a Pakistani-born American poet. Her work can be found in numerous literary journals including Sequestrum, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Texas Review, and the Dallas Review. She was a finalist for the 2021 and 2020 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and won the 2022 Equinox Hot Poets Spring Poetry Contest. She holds a day job far removed from her writing career, but makes up for it by serving on the board of Houston's Mutabilis Press. She lives in Houston, Texas. An earlier version of her manuscript was a finalist for the 2023 Perugia Press Prize. Elegy for My Tongue is her debut poetry collection. https://sabahusain.com/ Available at Terrapin Bookstore Amazon B&N Bookshop |