Godspotting (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781556597404)

Macarthur recipient's first collection of poetry embraces mortality and survival in the facer of global conflict and domestic threat.

Godspotting ponders and proclaims what it means to live, die, and survive in a world that "doesn't love any of us." Considering the fragility and utterly complicated nature of life, Aleksandar Hemon's deep contemplation of human mortality shifts between surrendering to the notion of death as a disappearing act, acknowledging the difficulty of living in the present, and accepting that this cruel world is still home to beautiful things. Celebrated for his fiction and nonfiction, Hemon here turns to poetry to interrogate the "shape and form" of joy, meandering through tender and complex memories of family members, his childhood, and the transitory moments he never wanted to end. This collection challenges typically religious understandings of death and what follows, teetering from curiosity to radical acceptance to despair about one's inevitable demise.

Sharp, reflective, and poignant, Godspotting explores the normalization of violence, new beginnings as a refugee, and Hemon's birthplace of Sarajevo. These poems illuminate the natural human desire to figure out one's place in the world before, during, and after life.