Interesting collection. I think the premise took over the writing occasionally, but there are several excellent poems and the overall look into the language of warfare is very moving.


Did I mean to read a book called "Look" right after a book called "Hide"? No. But I like it. I found this pristine Graywolf edition on the $1 donation shelf at our library. Thank you to whoever donated it for a sale. ( )

Excellent title poem and devastating/devastatingly good methodology she invented for the book—using the Department of Defense dictionary and terms found within it to build poems in different ways. She uses the terms as titles, as section headers, as the beginning and endings of lines. The language the DOD corrupted to turn into ghastly euphemisms is put back into its human context. Sharif writes as an Iranian American whose family was torn apart but the Iranian wars and whose growing up was misshapen by the War on Terror and xenophobia.

A couple poems almost live up to the promise of the title poem but... too many are kind of dull. Poems written in the form of censored letters to Guantanamo and the last poem Drone are other highlights. ( )

"DESTRUCTION RADIUS limited to blast site/and not the brother abroad/who answers his phone/then falls against the counter/or punches a cabinet door."

I cannot think of a better use for the techniques of found poetry than to recover the human costs of war from underneath the verbal slush of military terminology. Clichés really are life threatening.

Very gripping poems that show another side to war. ( )

A challenging read in the best sense, where Sharif appropriates the odd language and definitions from a DOD military dictionary, taking these utterly empty bureaucratic terms and interleaving them with stark images of violence and war. The emotional impact of these poems is deadened by the DOD terms, and then brought to shocking, contrasting life by the original language and images in other parts of the poems. The effect on me as a reader was one of disintegration and loss. I was left with an awareness that language itself has become deranged and cheapened--you see the cheapening directly in the ridiculously formal, empty military terms, but also you reach an understanding of how continuous violence deadens the reaction to any one atrocity, and where words describing any one atrocity lose their emotive power. There is a lack of faith in words to mean anything, in these poems. The poems feel like shattered pieces of meanings strewn about for me to pick up.

The collection also reminded me a little bit of Kathy Acker's fiction. Not in subject matter or even tone but rather, for its cynical, almost nihilistic take on the power of language to mean anything, to say anything. It's quite a feat to pull of an emotionally wrenching work of language while simultaneously doubting the force of language.

The collection resonated with me all the more because I have been thinking a lot about the hollowing-out of language during this US election year, where sometimes the rhetoric I hear from speeches and rallies reminds me of the 1984 gem:

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.” ( )