“To write a series of poems out of extreme illness is a bracing accomplishment indeed. In “Deluge,” her first full-length book, Leila Chatti, born of a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, brilliantly explores the trauma. In a frightening two-year saga of a tumor and the “flooding” it caused, Chatti finds not disassociation but deeper association with her own experience. Her strikingly personal relationship with Mary — who appears in both the Quran and the Bible — becomes a profound and steadying compass, as do lines from many other poets and philosophers, woven into the text in cento style. Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye”
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