Crowded House

Like a Viewfinder with overlapping reels, Safia Jama examines the way inherited trauma--her parents and brother fleeing military dictatorship in Somalia--can overlay the present day: "when my husband and I parted/ways,it seemed natural to me to pacck, as if, for a day trip/telling no one save two friends."  As a new life comes into focus, the speaker of the poems turns her attention to the tiny theater of "my small room"--"gazing out the window: I call it windowing" and marveling at bathroom mold that looks like Charles Bronson. The poems in Crowded House captivatingly delve into the complexities of the self and what constitutes home. -- Matthea Harvey.Safia Jama uses the poetic line in "weird combinations of extravagance/and asceticism" to unearth new glimpses of why human beings act--and dream--as they do.  - Sandra LimSafia Jama's Crowded House is a simmering debut... - Donika KellyIn her recuperation of the house as an organizing conceit, Jama demonstrates what..Gaston Bachelard mi