{"product_id":"baban-hajjar-low-flyingpb","title":"[08\/25\/26] Baban, Hajjar: LOW FLYING PLANES","description":"\u003cp\u003eMilkweed Editions, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: August 25, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSelected by Jake Skeets for the 2025 National Poetry Series, a reverent and revelatory debut examining language, memory, and identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"You looked at me like there was no \/ nest in my throat,\" Hajjar Baban writes in this spare, striking collection. \"Like I knew how \/ to sing. Like it was okay I had nowhere \/ to be.\" Writing from a mixed Afghan Kurdish heritage, she navigates the truth that exists between memory and erasure. Equal measures grounded and unmoored, the poems in \u003ci\u003eLOW FLYING PLANES\u003c\/i\u003e search for answers to the impossible question of belonging, catching fragmented glimpses of \"the plane intercepting sight of the shooting \/ star,\" \"satellites in the night sky,\" \"the language my father \/ didn't invite me to.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWielding a breakable and cautious syntax, Baban writes with a precision that highlights the complexity of interiority under surveillance and the tension between safety and yearning. Our speaker is hypervigilant and uncommonly observant, seeking to understand what language cannot capture: layered volumes of loss, the unshakable instinct to hide, \"a name for how my father looks \/ at the sky.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuarded yet resolute, inquisitive yet profoundly wise, \u003ci\u003eLOW FLYING PLANES\u003c\/i\u003e paints absence into a tangible shape. \"If language is to be made whole, if memory, if truth,\" Jake Skeets writes of this collection, \"it begins with a book like this.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45143458512919,"sku":"9781639551316","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/81aPbL5f1LL._SL1500.jpg?v=1780525581","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/baban-hajjar-low-flyingpb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}