The Tigers, They Let Me

In his sixth poetry collection, Anis Mojgani's poems travel closer to what his heart yearns for: a reborn, propelling love that can thrive, a true love of self.The author ventures throughout the book in a vulnerable hunt for a thriving understanding of what tenderness in our world looks like and what it can deliver to us. The author ventures throughout the book in a vulnerable hunt for a thriving understanding of what tenderness brings in a world at times rife with sorrows. Drawing from the simple directness of Kenneth Rexroth's book of Chinese poem translations and the always-present beauty of Lorca's voice, Mojgani tumbles into the joys of desire, not just from others, but also unfurls a meditation on how to love whether in the presence of another or when alone Birthed out of laughter and love, pain and remembrance, these new poems arrived out of a touchless world that has asked us all to navigate the difference between loneliness and alone. In this time Mojgani asks himself: "How do we show up to cup a little bit of ourselves into the soft earth and allow time to play its own part in what of ourselves we farm?" The poems here are much like what we put in the earth, ideas planted with hope and an unknowing openness to what might come. Whether we try to pull in tighter on the spools of love's thread or watch helplessly as the lines lengthen between us, this book is for those of us stumbling or resisting our path to intimacy; a book for those who are ready and running gleefully towards love, those who hadn't even known the earth under them was breaking until they saw the flowers. Mojgani invites the reader in so that they may take this voyage together.