Look

book cover for Look featuring a gray background and an unclear black and white image

Solmaz Sharif’s Look and the Reclamation of the Stories of Those Redacted and Erased

ByChristopher Louis Romaguera

While Solmaz Sharif’s poems tackle large subjects that concern large populaces, you can also see the power of the personal in her work. In fact, it is her personal journey that makes her 2016 collection universal: the closer you get to a subject, the more universal it becomes.

side by side series of the covers of Aber's Hard Damage and Sharif's Look

The Relationship Between the Military and Language in Look and Hard Damage

ByYasmine Ameli

Reading recent poetry collections by Solmaz Sharif and Aria Aber in concert, we see that Sharif’s serves as a project that inscribes the militarization of everyday language and its consequent normalization of violence—groundwork that allows for a radical project like Aber’s to exist.