That Kind of Sleep

By Susan Atefat-Peckham

Poems that delicately unveil the sensual beauty and occasional terror of the author's Iranian heritage.

Stirring and verdant, the poetry within That Kind of Sleep invites readers behind the opaque curtain that has historically concealed the lives of modern and traditional Iranian women. Susan Atefat-Peckham's images alternately whet and sting the senses as rich chador fabrics, earthy cooking scents, and the tender guidance of uncles and grandmothers give way to scene of female mistreatment that make the reader ache to return to the shelter that the chador and the curtain--rightfully or otherwise--provide. Atefat-Peckham's love and celebration of family and culture burnish this collection to a touching glow.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566891167
• ISBN13: 9781566891165
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Voice

When I was a student at Hope College, I had the honor of taking a poetry course with Susan. She was an amazingly beautiful woman, with a graceful presence and beautiful voice on paper. I bought her book to share with my high school students in a world literature class. I am saddened by her passing from our world. People like her belong here to influence others in their walk through life. Susan continues to inspire me through her poetry. She has truly left a legacy through this book of poems.

That Kind of Music

For readers afflicted with cultural and/or aesthetic myopia, yes, "That Kind of Sleep" represents a challenge, I suppose: all those "exotic" tastes, colors, sounds, smells, rhythms, textures! I found Susan Atefat-Peckham's debut collection refreshing for exactly those qualities, plus the fact that it isn't yet another hip postmodern exercise, gentrified museum tour or splayfooted confessional. What "Sleep" is, for me, is sensory and emotional accessibiltiy, musically wrought and tactfully rendered. The title sequence that concludes the book is a tour de force that needs more space to do it justice than is possible here; instead, I'd like to focus on two shorter poems that appear in the second and third sections of "Sleep.""Candlemaker" is a lyric glimpse into the life of a young (perhaps prepubescent) wife. Here's the first stanza: "Her eager form leans into heat, / her back arched over the pans, / her arms stirring. She rolls / the burning red into the soft folds / of her hands, shaping it to her flesh / and bones, trying to forget her husband's / eyes when he wanted to try again." Atefat-Peckham has a fine ear, and it shows. The cadencing, the simple, clean language, the quietly deft breaks--all realize the sexual (especially the phallic) context made clear in the final line. And there are other correspondences. "Candlemaker" immediately follows "When She Was Nine," an account of a girl "slumped in her wedding dress, / half a woman, / the swellings of her breasts / not quite swellings yet" watching the ritual sacrifice of a goat. Her perspective is obliquely yet graphically rendered: "She cried under the white net / of her wedding veil over the slaughtered goat / at her threshold, the blood staining its hairy throat." Also, the Rumi excerpts that begin this section further complicate "Candlemaker's" tone: "When lovers moan, / they're telling our story. Like this. . . . When someone asks you what there is to do, / light the candle in his hand. / Like this.""Dates," which opens section three of "Sleep," is again a treat for the ears with its unassuming, precise language. It's amazing how Atefat-Peckham milks music from so many monosyllabic words: "Three days and they wrapped / his washed body in muslin, / no lumbering sounds of coffins / carried, only the white ripple / of cloth." However, what most intrigues me about this poem are its twin ambiguities of religious and secular mystery, realized in image and metaphor: ". . . the woman / with dates walked the aisles / offering the shriveled skin / and its sweet stench on a silver tray, / . . . Somewhere under / Iranian earth, seamless cloth lay / on its side, a turned face frozen /under a concrete canopy, legs bent / toward Mecca. She lowered the tray. / I reached for a date, and my mouth / watered to taste its sugar."A yearning toward--and away from--both cultures infuses these poems, and the book as a whole, with a music I find very compelling. And uniquely American.

that kind of book...

I first picked up "That Kind of Sleep" in my college bookstore when I was cashing one of my first paychecks of the summer as a custodian cleaning frat houses. I cannot tell you how refreshing it was to wash SD20 off my hands, open up my water bottle and sandwhich bag, and eat lunch to the rhythm of Atefat-Peckham's poetry. Atefat-Peckham writes with the clarity of someone who has _seen_ and continues to _see_. I've opened up "That Kind of Sleep" dozens of times since that long-ago lunch break -- in airplanes, on camping trips, and sitting in my room before bed. It's the kind of book that -- whether in a Greyhound or an empty cathedral -- communicates space and breath and beauty.

A Great New American Poet

That Kind of Sleep has received excellent reviews from Publishers Weekly, American Book Review, North American Review, Bloomsbury Review, Multicultural Review, St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the Star Tribune, to name a few. And this book deserves all of the praise it has received. Occasionally, a book by an Ethnic-American writer causes some difficulty for reviewers. The more myopic among us can be blinded to both its qualities and flaws by often overwhelming content. In the case of this book, the craft matches and even surpasses the subject matter. I could go on about how necessary such poems about the middle east are at this juncture in American life and culture, but I'm not going to. What consistently amazes about this book is the quality of the craft, the luminous imagery, the engaging and engrossing characterizations, and startling wisdom. Out of the tradition of Jeffers and Frost this poet writes from her chosen landscape with subtlety and great sensitivity. Her subjects are chosen with empathy and her storytelling is deft and often rending. But it is when she comes to the title-sequence at the end of the volume that she truly hits her stride, combining her gift for narrative with a mystical reach and rhythm truly unique to contemporary poets of any stripe. Indeed, the dreamlike quality reminds one of Roethke's Far Field sequence. It is easy to praise or ridicule any book of poetry or fiction by selecting one or two lines. So I will quote liberally from the first section of this sequence "He will breathe / a loud sleep, his heels will crack with gold ./ And I will have the words pulled gently / at his mouth, and he will speak, the rim / of his hat will lift the wind, and I will have him / alive with line and light and sound, if death / is a sudden waking to some other town." There is real poetic mastery, real control--and the music is unbelievable. To not hear it, one would have to have an ear of tin. This is a poet who will last--one our children's children will be reading long after we are gone. I'm sure of it.