This Isa Nice Neighborhood
by Farid Matuk
About This Isa Nice Neighborhood
Can identity be pliant and penetrable? Can the speech act be one of attention over intention, can play and fluidity open onto an ethic? This Isa Nice Neighborhood, Farid Matuk’s first full-length collection, says yes. Yes to the rejection of any opposition between politics and aesthetics, between rhetoric and poetics. Yes to vulnerability. Yes to a poetry willing to enact the errors, uncertainties, and tangled complexities of our political, sexual, and social lives. Testing both narrative and lyric, Matuk finds desire at the root of each, a root from which, these poems suggest, compassion and permission grow intertwined.
This Isa Nice Neighborhood has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2011 Arab American Book Awards, named a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award by the Poetry Society of America, and chosen by Geoffrey G. O'Brien for inclusion in the Poetry Society of America's New American Poets series. Order from Small Press Distribution here.
Excerpt from This Isa Nice Neighborhood
Listen to "History As a War of Poses" ( audio hosted by PennSound )
"History As a War of Poses" by Farid Matuk
Visit Matuk's PennSound author page for more audio
About the Author
Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine) andMy Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta). This Isa Nice Neighborhood was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2011 Arab American Book Awards, named a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award by the Poetry Society of America, and chosen by Geoffrey G. O’Brien for inclusion in the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets series. My Daughter La Chola was named among the best books of 2013 by John Keene for The Volta and by Nick Twemlow for the Poetry Foundation. It was also recognized with an &Now Award for innovative writing and an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Arab American Book Awards. Matuk serves on the poetry editorial team at Fence and teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona.