The Shadow That Doesn't Leave the Shirt

Maged Zaher's lines flow like the rivers of Purgatory, out of a hell we hear about, and towards a Paradise he helps us intuit. Rippling in quick succession each poem holds to the turns and the eddies of feeling. He shares with us the flats of candor, the cascades of guilt, and the afternoon shimmer of utopian thought, not to mention medications and breakdowns, corporate culture, radical politics, spiritual craving, exile, the alienations of home, and cups of damn fine coffee. Despite all the love and suffering evoked here, the poet's charm never falters. (Is there any contemporary just so much fun to read)? Maged Zaher might just be Frank O'Hara's long lost Egyptian cousin. There is a life force, tested and true, passed on to us in the effortless dazzle of his lines.--Joseph Donahue

Poetry.