If Reality Doesn't Work Out

Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies. "In this long poem of poems, each poem page reads as if it could be the last. IF REALITY represents the end of the world (the end of politics the end of love the end of the poet) in its middle. It is the poem I have wanted to write, the poem that approaches an expression of the pain of the success of Nothing, the united statesian/global obliteration of the shared space of the tragic upon which it proliferates. It is the poem about end, without end."—Rachel Levitsky

"Maged Zaher's IF REALITY DOESN'T WORK OUT is a text made of 'body and blood' in which our discerning and earnest global subject imbues versified sentential units with desire, loss, and a sweet buoyancy. This book is honest, strong, and bright as it navigates manifestation and dissipation, in love, in revolution, at once celebrating and mourning intimacy and its opposites."—Alli Warren

Maged Zaher is the author of IF REALITY DOESN'T WORK OUT (SplitLevel Texts, 2014), THANK YOU FOR THE WINDOW OFFICE (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), THE REVOLUTION HAPPENED AND YOU DIDN'T CALL ME (Tinfish Press, 2012), and PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS AN ENGINEER (Pressed Wafer, 2009). His collaborative work with the Australian poet Pam Brown, FAROUT LIBRARY SOFTWARE, was published by Tinfish Press in 2007. His translations of contemporary Egyptian poetry have appeared in Jacket Magazine, Denver Quarterly and Banipal. He has performed his work at Subtext, Bumbershoot, the Kootenay School of Writing, St. Marks Project, Evergreen State College, and American University in Cairo, among other places. Maged is the recipient of the 2013 Genius Award in Literature from the Seattle weekly The Stranger.