Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

224 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Book Reviews
And that seems to end the discussion
Though they are sure of anger and lonely,
They are not so sure of chronic or austere.
But Graham is. Plain-spoken, direct, and accessible, the poems
of A World Without End will appeal to those readers who seek the
unadorned truths of being a man in a world that will most definitely
end, a world in which poems serve as one of the few means of
establishing a voice that will survive beyond our flawed mortalities.
It’s not a book of easy solace, but one of experiences coming back for
Graham—and, by extension, us—with all their implications of joy
and sorrow. “Let the past pour over the past,” Graham implores in
“History: A Prayer,” and in the poems of A World Without End, the
past most definitely does.
—Reviewed by Allison Joseph
Hasan, Raza Ali. Grieving Shias. Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: The
Sheep Meadow Press, 2006. 47 pages. $12.95.
Raza Ali Hasan’s collection of poems Grieving Shias crosses many
geographical and historical boundaries in its explorations of what we
lose, what we hold onto, and how we survive the public and personal
costs both exact from us all. These poems seek to document the human
price of the political upheavals which have shaped the world we live
in. Hasan draws upon his own experiences as a resident at one time
of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and, now, the United States to
examine the dimensions of the pain coloring landscapes beyond their
picturesque surfaces and to weigh the dignity of the human resolve
to build, sustain, and—when necessary—revolt against such crushing
forces.
Grieving Shias opens tellingly with the poem “Mourning and
Other Activities”:
You take the Faith and a horse—
reasonably Arab looking one—feed him
rusgullas and and milk for a year.
While you fatten him you terrorize him
with different Asiatic techniques
into mildness and meekness.