I have to live

Praise

Praise for THOU by Aisha Sasha John:
 • “An act of deep attention to the physical self, to the positioning of bodies in the world, Aisha Sasha John’s THOU takes us on a journey through power and society, hatred and love, anger and healing, offering an intimate, clear-eyed look at our shared humanity. Original, funny, sensuous; at once profound and unpretentious, John’s lines are a pleasure and a revelation.” — Jury comment, Trillium Book Award for Poetry
 • “To read this book is to experience the poem happening to you–and to want in.” — 49th Shelf
 • “A book of meditative chant, sing-song patter and performance lyric, THOU is a collection of poetry shaped around a pronoun, inquiring, shaking and prodding and shattering.” — rob mclennan
 • “Aisha Sasha John’s THOU re-plays that archaic pronoun as a constantly present movement and rhythm of attention: the suddenness of the interpolative ‘moment.’ These lines of poetry ‘shake . . . a little’ as the ‘I’ narrates and choreographs a monologue of the self in motion; each page is the dance floor and John’s words break through the ‘I-as-you’ with both the foreignicity of anticipation and the reflection of grace.” — Fred Wah
 • “[John’s poetry] bristles with an intelligence sharpened on the realization that feeling is a way of thinking. . . . The effect, of looseness carrying and building tropes in a way that explicates and satisfies, while maintaining an air of mystery, makes THOU a model of poetic construction.” — Michael Newton, Urchin Movement