Publication Date: August 15, 2025
Paperback, 76 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-06-2
Adam Day’s book-length poem The Strategic Crescent, a satirical travelogue, weaves together the picturesque medieval plazas and pomegranate trees of Afghanistan and Iraq, with Western military intervention. Modeled after The New York Times travel series, “36 Hours in _____,” Day does not disappoint curious readers. “‘So, forget magazine covers that promise: “Undiscovered M____!”/“Hidden H_____” “Secret T____,’” exclaims the speaker, a female journalist. “When a region has been attracting / admirers for more than 1,000 years,” she writes, “no square inch is undiscovered.” The speaker reports in both fact and fiction, and aspects of the two nations and the region are often conflated, as the casual Western observer is apt to do. This book is a thought-provoking adventure, full of great mosques, night owl nightspots, and “At sunrise… [an] outdoor abattoir... [Where]… water/steams and hisses on the white stones.”
About the Author
Adam Day is the author of Illuminated Edges, Left-Handed Wolf, and Model of a City in Civil War, and is the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN Award. His work has appeared in APR, Boston Review, The Progressive, Fence, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of Action, Spectacle Press.
Publication Date: August 15, 2025
Paperback, 76 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-06-2
Adam Day’s book-length poem The Strategic Crescent, a satirical travelogue, weaves together the picturesque medieval plazas and pomegranate trees of Afghanistan and Iraq, with Western military intervention. Modeled after The New York Times travel series, “36 Hours in _____,” Day does not disappoint curious readers. “‘So, forget magazine covers that promise: “Undiscovered M____!”/“Hidden H_____” “Secret T____,’” exclaims the speaker, a female journalist. “When a region has been attracting / admirers for more than 1,000 years,” she writes, “no square inch is undiscovered.” The speaker reports in both fact and fiction, and aspects of the two nations and the region are often conflated, as the casual Western observer is apt to do. This book is a thought-provoking adventure, full of great mosques, night owl nightspots, and “At sunrise… [an] outdoor abattoir... [Where]… water/steams and hisses on the white stones.”
About the Author
Adam Day is the author of Illuminated Edges, Left-Handed Wolf, and Model of a City in Civil War, and is the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN Award. His work has appeared in APR, Boston Review, The Progressive, Fence, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of Action, Spectacle Press.
