A SENSE OF CONNECTION TO THE FAMILIAR (BUT STRANGE TO OTHERS)
“Portrait of the Alcoholic, with Craving” by Kaveh Akbar
http://bostonreview.net/
We can’t all be doctors, lawyers, convicts, or carnies. But some of us can be those things. We have our own stories, and when they overlap with the stories of others in verse, a strong bond develops. There are many of us who can relate to addiction. Kaveh Akbar’s poem “Portrait of the Alcoholic, with Craving” makes that connection for me from the opening line: “I’ve lost the unspendable coin I wore around / my neck.” It places me, as a recovering addict, immediately in the world of 12-step meetings and relapses in the same way poems from Reginald Betts’ book Felon leave me meditating on my post-prison life. Not every poem connects with such intimacy and immediacy. Those that do are the poems we, as writers also, wish we had written.
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