In 1953, Yoko Ono wrote a score called "Secret Piece," an open-ended formula for musical performance in a forest at daybreak. Beginning with this invitation to creation, and using essays, diary entries, prose maps, and verse fragments, Kazim Ali marks a path through quantum physics, sixth-century Chola Empire sculptures, the challenges of literary translation and of climate change, and destruction of a priceless set of handmade flutes by airport security. Amid shards from far-flung histories and geographies he finds the cosmos.
Kazim Ali's books include five volumes of poetry, The Far Mosque, The Fortieth Day, Bright Felon, Sky Ward, and All One's Blue: New and Selected Poems; four novels, QUINN'S PASSAGE, The Disappearance of Seth , Wind Instrument, and THE SECRET ROOM; a collection of short stories, Uncle Sharif's Life in Music, and three collections of essays, Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence, FASTING FOR RAMADAN and Resident Alien: On Border-crossing and the Undocumented Divine. He has translated books by Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi and Marguerite Duras. He is an associate professor of Comparative Literature and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Oberlin College.