Mandible Wishbone Solvent - Paperback

by Asiya Wadud (Author)

A poetry collection that brings together word, image, and sound to reflect on fractured, fragmentary states of being.

The poetry of Mandible Wishbone Solvent is situated in the space of bridges, fragmentary overlays, spectral reach, and the desire to keep reaching. Asiya Wadud's poems engage in this act, not to stake a claim or to fasten themselves, but to hold fragments together in order to offer possibilities for connection and extension. Throughout the collection lies an acknowledgment that any hold will drift, meander, and find new paths, with each separation making space for new entanglements. Drawing on a keen interest in tactility and ekphrasis, Wadud mines the repetition and extension that comes with any fractured state of existence and considers the nature of a residual and roving we.

Following this selection of lyrical, ekphrastic, fragmented poems, the book concludes with two prose pieces that dwell on the concepts of "isthmus" and "drift," respectively, which offer further grounds for contemplation and provide a frame for the poems.

Author Biography

Asiya Wadud is the author of several poetry collections, including, most recently, No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body. Her writing has been published in e-flux journal, BOMB Magazine, Triple Canopy, Poetry, Yale Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by the Foundation Jan Michalski, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Danspace Project, Finnish Cultural Institute of New York, Rosendal Theater Norway, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, and Beirut Arts Center, among others. Wadud lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she teaches poetry at Saint Ann's School and Columbia University.