"Anahita Jamali Rad paces traces turns feminist Marxist utopian poetics politics on their / our ears."
— J.R. Carpenter
“Urgent and incising, these poems follow wide swaths of form and expression through a Marxist and Post-Marxist love and search for equality. They are as intimately woven scenes uttered after the cruelty of human bondage as they are vilifying critiques of the society that does not end and mauls us all. They are in part confessional as we are all confessional, and these poems are also in part movements toward a future where the liberation of poetry binds us together, and not to the oppressor. … The poetry is refreshing. Whether stark, disjointed and grammatically voided columns, or impressions of stanza blocks cascading from segment to segment, this poetry is its own. … for love and autonomy is a collection that will remain relevant for if ‘we’ are ‘we’ and if ‘us’ are ‘us’ its crystalline multiplicity of facets will inspire the reader into consistent action and revision of action.”
–Queen Mob’s Tea House
"Vancouver poet and editor Anahita Jamali Rad’s first trade poetry collection, For Love And Autonomy (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2016), is wildly smart, dark and funny".
—rob mclennan
“In For Love And Autonomy, [Jamali Rad] performs a sustained critique of the self-evident and self-determining quality of the lyric subject. … [She asks] what love, what autonomy, what poetry is possible under the conditions of late capitalism? … The poems in For Love And Autonomy function, often simultaneously, in two distinct registers: an analytic register, to lay bare their own implication in the field of capitalist production and the extent to which they are implicated in it; and a poetic or ethical register, to feel out what it is possible to say or do, or what should be said or done in response to a world overrun by capitalism. This twofold critique excruciatingly charts the powerlessness of life in this historical moment. … Jamali Rad is unflinching in mapping the extent to which life is subordinated to work. … a harrowing but nevertheless compelling collection.”
—Debutantes: Reviewing New Voices in Poetry
“The most intriguing section of the collection’s ten is probably “post-harem heavy breathing,” built on fragmented, often unfinished or overlapping lines (“no I won’t / shed a tear / gas or shot / with rubber”). Each poem title is taken from the previous poem, creating a mise en abyme… The shattered prose evokes bombshells or the exploded consciousness of the disenfranchised, as well as the panting of a panicked or aroused character.”
—Canadian Literature
“The poetry is refreshing. Whether stark, disjointed and grammatically voided columns, or impressions of stanza blocks cascading from segment to segment, this poetry is its own..”–Queen Mob’s Tea House
“It’s time to enter the language, to discover what lies beyond … Jamali Rad’s poetry is significant. It will require many readings with much discussion to appreciate the value of her contribution to the world of language.”—Prairie Fire
“It’s time to enter the language, to discover what lies beyond. … Jamali Rad’s poetry is significant. It will require many readings with much discussion to appreciate the value of her contribution to the world of language.”—Prairie Fire
