A Toast in the House of Friends
Poems by Akilah Oliver

An erudite, gripping manifesto of grief.

“The ceremony of sorrow is performed with a measured, defiant acknowledgement that makes words charms, talismans of the fallen world. This poetry is a holding space, a folded grace, in which objects held most dear disappear to return as radiant moments of memory’s forgiving home.”—Charles Bernstein

“A Toast in the House of Friends brings us back to life via the world of death and dream . . . Akilah Oliver’s book is an extraordinary gift for everyone, language pushing beyond itself into the aura of holy graffiti in the big night, unstable shapes that won’t break.”—Alice Notley

Akilah Oliver’s poems incorporate prose, theory, and lyric performance into a powerful testimony of loss and longing, in their journey through the borderlands of sorrow, they grapple with violence, find expression in chants, and, like the graffiti she analyzes, become a place of public and artistic memorial.