A playful, ecstatic, and invigorating collection of lyrical work by one of America's finest young poets.
Farnoosh Fathi’s poetry has been admired for its “riot of associations and sonic improvisations” (Christine Hume, Boston Review); its commitment to fathoming language as what it is—an unfathomable depth. Granny Cloud, Fathi’s second book of poems, showcases her gifts both in short works of prodigious concentration and in a long poem, “Anyone’s Don’tanelle,” composed of the drafts and do-overs that led to “Fontanelle”—a wild reimagining of the dispirited court tumbler said to have inspired St. Francis’s “Jugglers of God.” Granny Cloud is a portrait of ecstatic decisions and revisions, constantly reversed, constantly renewed.
“The fantastical and strange second collection from Farnoosh Fathi evokes André Breton’s surrealism and the linguistic playfulness of Gertrude Stein.... Enthusiasts of formal innovation and linguistic play will savor this astonishing volume.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Specializing in moments of linguistic collision, Fathi, in just a few deft syllables, can trigger a riot of associations and sonic improvisations that extend beyond the ironic, beyond belletristic distractions, into the nuanced tonal inflections of a self and culture auscultated." —Christine Hume, Boston Review
"Farnoosh Fathi is looking for a most vulgar self-satisfaction in writing… 'What others rule operatic was for me finally accurate!'; 'My legs espalier'; 'No one who means it knows it.' The comparisons are discontent. These are horological poems. They appeal to life’s cycles—to Fathi's own greatness." —Corina Copp
"Poetry, like the humours, like the soul, can be grasped only when its exuberance exceeds the body. Granny Cloud is that exuberance, thus illustrating the impossibility of finding form. This book is the Tower of Babel for our generation! The poems wander off the page, and walk, as Saint Francis did, to call to birds." —Darcie Dennigan
"Ah, 'what have I done in my able meter?,' a drily dismayed Farnoosh Fathi asks herself. A jubilant lot, I’d say... Poetry too radically rambunctious, too linguistically lubricious to be defined by even her, let alone by this admiring ‘ogre kissing guesses’—who can, however, declare enthusiastically that she deserves as wide an audience as possible, especially among the extravagant." —Stephen Yenser
Farnoosh Fathi is the author of Great Guns (Canarium, 2013), the editor of Joan Murray: Drafts, Fragments, and Poems (NYRB, 2018), and the founder of the Young Artists Language and Devotion Alliance (YALDA). She lives and teaches in New York.
A playful, ecstatic, and invigorating collection of lyrical work by one of America's finest young poets.
Farnoosh Fathi’s poetry has been admired for its “riot of associations and sonic improvisations” (Christine Hume, Boston Review); its commitment to fathoming language as what it is—an unfathomable depth. Granny Cloud, Fathi’s second book of poems, showcases her gifts both in short works of prodigious concentration and in a long poem, “Anyone’s Don’tanelle,” composed of the drafts and do-overs that led to “Fontanelle”—a wild reimagining of the dispirited court tumbler said to have inspired St. Francis’s “Jugglers of God.” Granny Cloud is a portrait of ecstatic decisions and revisions, constantly reversed, constantly renewed.
Reviews
“The fantastical and strange second collection from Farnoosh Fathi evokes André Breton’s surrealism and the linguistic playfulness of Gertrude Stein.... Enthusiasts of formal innovation and linguistic play will savor this astonishing volume.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Specializing in moments of linguistic collision, Fathi, in just a few deft syllables, can trigger a riot of associations and sonic improvisations that extend beyond the ironic, beyond belletristic distractions, into the nuanced tonal inflections of a self and culture auscultated." —Christine Hume, Boston Review
"Farnoosh Fathi is looking for a most vulgar self-satisfaction in writing… 'What others rule operatic was for me finally accurate!'; 'My legs espalier'; 'No one who means it knows it.' The comparisons are discontent. These are horological poems. They appeal to life’s cycles—to Fathi's own greatness." —Corina Copp
"Poetry, like the humours, like the soul, can be grasped only when its exuberance exceeds the body. Granny Cloud is that exuberance, thus illustrating the impossibility of finding form. This book is the Tower of Babel for our generation! The poems wander off the page, and walk, as Saint Francis did, to call to birds." —Darcie Dennigan
"Ah, 'what have I done in my able meter?,' a drily dismayed Farnoosh Fathi asks herself. A jubilant lot, I’d say... Poetry too radically rambunctious, too linguistically lubricious to be defined by even her, let alone by this admiring ‘ogre kissing guesses’—who can, however, declare enthusiastically that she deserves as wide an audience as possible, especially among the extravagant." —Stephen Yenser
Author
Farnoosh Fathi is the author of Great Guns (Canarium, 2013), the editor of Joan Murray: Drafts, Fragments, and Poems (NYRB, 2018), and the founder of the Young Artists Language and Devotion Alliance (YALDA). She lives and teaches in New York.
