The Art of Strangeness by Mehnaz Sahibzada

To devote one’s life to poetry is no small act, and The Art of Strangeness reveals both the cost and the courage of that choice. In poems like “Kitchens Through Which I Have Traveled” and “Modern Fairy Tale,” Mehnaz Sahibzada pulls us into her multifaceted vision of life, where everyday objects shimmer with myth, memory, and music.

Sahibzada offers us a world both intimate and expansive, with poems that span heartbreaks and halal, kitchens and continents. This much is clear: Sahibzada loves language. In these pages, she uses it to cast spells, prophesy mealtimes, and seek out the strangeness of a life lived in many different locales. Sahibzada’s relationship to language is lush and unapologetic: “My mind mirthed, thoughts / dissolve into song, I sink / into a hive / of shumukh shadows. You / pluck my wings in the curd / of darkness.”

Traveling through ghazals, villanelles, and sonnets, from Lahore, Pakistan to Pasadena, California, the poems in The Art of Strangenessare both tender and tensile. They show us the resilience of a life lived with an ear tuned to language and the simple pleasure of a café au lait. These poems listen closely to the world. Pick up this book, and it just might teach you how to listen too.

–Danielle Mitchell, Executive Director of The Poetry Lab