{"id":9369,"date":"2024-11-06T22:01:05","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T22:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=9369"},"modified":"2024-11-06T22:01:06","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T22:01:06","slug":"professor-alis-book-celebration","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-october-2024\/professor-alis-book-celebration\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Ali’s Book Celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ahlaam Abdulwali \u201825<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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On October 22nd, I had the honor of attending Professor Sarah Ghazal Ali\u2019s book celebration. The book event took place in the cozy living room of the Briggs House. The peak autumn colors and dreary weather made it the perfect day for a poetry reading. Professor Matt Burgess introduced Professor Ali and spoke of the many feats she achieved with her new poetry collection Theophanies<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Professor Burgess described this collection as \u201cmodern, but somehow also ancient\u201d and a form of \u201cmatrilineal archive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Professor Burgess\u2019 creative writing class, his students read \u201cMy Faith Gets Grime under Its Nails<\/a>,\u201d one of the poems Professor Ali read during this event. One of his students remarked in class that the actions listed in the poem, like \u201csleeping coiled on my night-\/ blue prayer mat\u201d or praying salah in \u201celevators, Victoria\u2019s Secret\/fitting room, the muck-slick meadow after rain,\u201d were things that they did too. After Professor Burgess\u2019 introduction, Professor Ali read some poems from her collection. My personal favorite was \u201cMatrilineage [umbilicus]<\/em><\/a>,\u201d a contrapuntal poem that can be read 3 different ways. The poem is divided down the middle like the \u201clinea nigra\u201d mentioned in the poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Professor Ali graciously answered questions from the audience after the reading. Professor Ali described her poetic lineage which includes poets Agha Shahid Ali and Mary Szybist. Professor Burgess delivered the closing remarks and everyone went to get a bookie (book cookies decorated with the cover of Theophanies<\/em>) to enjoy! <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ahlaam Abdulwali \u201825 On October 22nd, I had the honor of attending Professor Sarah Ghazal Ali\u2019s book celebration. The book event took place in the cozy living room of the Briggs House. The peak autumn colors and dreary weather made it the perfect day for a poetry reading. Professor Matt Burgess introduced Professor Ali […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":9323,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9369","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9379,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9369\/revisions\/9379"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}