"It is rare for a poet to write about war and the painful reverberations of political violence with such poise, much less with the purpose and passion displayed by Huma Sheikh. Employing the ancient Arabic form, the Qasida, Sheikh takes us to a volatile, war-torn Kashmir where her father, a well-known recording artist, was murdered, his body never identified, his death a mystery that haunts his daughter's every perception as she navigates a broken world saturated with his absence. Her voice distinctive and soulful, her vision laser focused and unflinching, Sheikh transforms an unreported tragedy into an unforgettable testament in this powerful, impressive debut."

"Each of these exquisite odes has the power to tear and heal your heart on the same page, even in the same line or stanza. Huma Sheikh writes with ferocious honesty about the father who was taken from her under shockingly violent circumstances, the mother who reinvented her own life to nurture the bereft child who grew to become a strong-voiced poet of our times. When she addresses her native soil, she writes, 'Kashmir, you taught me to say yes ma'am, no sir, thank you,' reminding us that an artist's job is to traverse this beautiful, brutal world as best she can and make art of it, make poems as entrancing as these."

"Huma Sheikh takes the long history of the Arabian Ode, which has been a palace constructed by men, and makes it her own, and in this book tells the heartbreaking story of her father's death and its aftermath. It is a story of war and death but told with such tenderness that the world is reconstructed even in the midst of 'bullet storms.' In these poems grenades and apples appear on the same line as do bunkers and cherries. Even in the darkest corners of her song there is a praise of the world in all its beauty and horror. How can a man just disappear? He does, but his daughter lives to make sure that no one forgets."