I have to live: Poems [Paperback]

A new collection ablaze with urgency and radiant inquiry from a 2015 finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry

A demand and promise; an obligation and challenge; a protest and call: I have to live.
Juiced on the ecstasy of self-belief: I have to live.
A burgeoning erotics of psychic boldness: I have to live.
In which sensitivity is recognized as wealth: I have to live.
Trumpeting the forensic authority of the heart: I have to live.
This is original ancient poetry.
It fashions a universe from its mouth.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'sló>