The loneliness of shape is a moment’s relief from the great burdens imposed on us by the ordering of society to serve the few. These poems challenge the way we are parsed by marketers in order to be sold goods, services and ideas and the way we are coerced into thinking of ourselves. They explore our connectedness, our action on each other, our operation as elixirs, our oneness, our indivisibility. They speak of our names, our stereotypes, our categories as baggage that hinders our understanding of ourselves as part of a cosmic whole.

Djelloul Marbrook’s previous works have won critical acclaim and prestigious prizes, including the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, the 2010 International Book Award in poetry, and the 2008 Literal Latt fiction prize. As a journalist, poet, writer and activist, he has invested his talent and intellect in an artistic voice exemplifying the best qualities of humanity. Through an engaging, well-reasoned and powerfully clear voice, he gives flight to a spiritual awakening and casts a wise shadow on the canon of American poetry.