Kaveh Akbar Comes (Back) to Tallahassee

Poetry gives Kaveh Akbar goosebumps.

I was sitting in one of the last rows of the Conradi Theater, but I could feel Akbar’s thrill practically radiating off him and into the room. The very talented (and now very famous) Iranian-American writer came to Tallahassee on October 23rd for a reading and a conversation. After FSU’s Dr. Andrew Epstein gave him a glowing introduction, the first thing Akbar did once on stage was give a glowing and personal introduction of Dr. Epstein. Akbar noted that during his visits to different PhD programs across America, Epstein was the driving factor for his enrollment at FSU. He shared the moment that drew him in from one of Epstein’s classes: “A room full of people quoting Bishop to each other while the sun was out was utterly thrilling to me,” he said.

The next person Akbar talked about (once again before himself) was his spouse, poet Paige Lewis, whom he met in Epstein’s class. In fact, the first time they saw each other, Akbar was so enamored with Dr. Epstein and the poetry discussion that he joked he“didn’t clock [Paige] at all” that day. Akbar spoke about potentially naming his future child after Epstein but said he couldn’t name him Epstein “for obvious reasons.” “What’s your middle name?” Akbar asked. The audience caught on, and a few laughs emitted from the crowd. “Davis,” Epstein replied, to which Kaveh shrugged slightly, eliciting more chuckles. Before the reading, Akbar checked to make sure everyone could see and hear him. When an audience member told him “no,” Akbar got the attention of the event coordinators. A CDU staff member rose to fix the lights; he asked for her name and said “round of applause for Aishat” to the crowd. We clapped while Aishat fixed the light, and I realized that the show so far had been Akbar checking in with everyone; we were all there for him, but he had made it about others first.

Akbar started the reading hunched over, his toes pressed into the stage floor, surging forward in his chair as he spoke. While he read the first Cyrus Shams chapter the front half of the yellow book cover flapped along with his movements. The other heads in the crowd bowed to read with Akbar. I kept my copy folded in my lap, my eyes still looking forward so I could observe him on stage. I watched his arm fold up on his chair; he swayed his body, and his legs twisted. The room was silent while Akbar read, a few laughs emerging from the quips he sprinkled in the prose. It was like Akbar took almost all of the focus he gave to his body to the text; it became most important at that moment because of the attention he gave to it.

The conversation shifted to talking about poetry. “That’s how I knew you first,” said Dr. Epstein. Akbar shared the backstory of how he came to be a poet, or rather, how poetry came to him. It was a high school in Indiana, Mr. Henn’s class (“that’s H-E-N-N,” Akbar said). Akbar heard his teacher read Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It” in class, afterwards he went to ask Mr. Henn whether he could borrow the collection. Mr. Henn sent him home with that and a stack of small press journals. Akbar compared opening up those pages to a biblical revelation, he (only half-jokingly) describes an angel coming down with horns and declaring him a poet; he called his newfound purpose a “shock of clarity,” and “as self-evident as [him] having dark hair.”

When Akbar spoke, it was like his thoughts moved faster than his words, and he cut himself off often. As he answered questions, you could see him get caught up in another idea somehow more interesting than the last; he’d mentally deliberate a bit before directing us to a new line of thought, all of it seeming random until he tied it back together. He moved with so much energy; the more he talked, the more animated he got. This excitement was infectious, and oh, how I wished I could get more of it. I found myself unconsciously smiling at his deftness with language; he used words like “architectonic” without skipping a beat.

Next, Akbar talked about his “diet.” When he decided to start writing his novel, in order to grasp the necessary steps of a narrative, he read two novels a week and watched one movie a day, or seven movies a week, for four to five years. When recounting that period of time, he described himself as “utterly kleptomaniacal.” “I was stealing everything,” he said.

During Q&A, Akbar got up on the chair like a toddler. There’s no other way to describe it. This man, who was well above 6 feet, pressed his legs into himself and planted his shoes on the seat cushion without hesitation. Kaveh wasn’t formal; he asked for the names of the askers, even asking them if they’d finished his book. When an elderly couple got up to leave, Akbar called behind them, “Thank you for coming!” to which the audience laughed, misinterpreting his shoutout as a snarky comment about leaving his show early. He corrected them and said something about how time is our currency, and he was grateful that all of us were sharing that with him.

Another poet from the audience, named Mads, asked Akbar if writing his novel was “scary” for him. Akbar responded, “I used to drive forklifts at a Subaru plant and do substitute teaching, there were real stakes for that […] This isn’t the scary part of being alive [...] I live with my best friend, and we write all the time.” I felt buzzed, and also a bit envious. Akbar’s passion was refreshing, but it was also intimidating.

Writing is clearly so special to him that it comes across as holy and I wanted to know where he got his fervor from to take some for myself.

After waiting in line for half an hour and hearing Akbar listen to the names of every single person, ask them specific questions about themselves, and give them personalized signings, it was my turn in line. It was past ten at this point and his eyes were lined red though he greeted me like I was the first in line. There was so much I wanted to say to him: thank you for being here; thank you for being so inspiring; your energy is necessary and refreshing; I’m definitely going to finish the rest of the novel, so sorry I’ve taken so long to complete it; you “making it” has made me feel like I can too but how do I copy your devotion to this craft and use it as my own, blah blah blah. I only got out a fraction of that. He asked me for my name and succeeded in spelling it right. I told him my major, that I was a senior, maybe going to grad school, but wanted to take a year to become a real person. He nodded understandingly, and I was glad for the act. It was a normal conversation, and questions that would normally feel stiff and inauthentic came across as genuine from Akbar. I asked him to sign the book for the Southeast Review’s Halloween fundraiser I was helping with so we could auction off the novel. Akbar fiddled with his pen, “Can it be general, or?” he looked at me. “You can do whatever’s easiest, just your name is fine,” I rehearsed what my supervisor had told me to ask for that morning. Akbar hesitated slightly before deciding to sketch a cartoonish drawing on the front pages; he wrote a quick “thank you!” next to it before handing it back to me.

Written by Cherith King

Edited by Aidan Little  

Editor in Chief: Hope Fell

Graphic Design by Hannah Wood