Claudia Rankine described the poems in Alsadir’s first book as ‘lawless,’ “provocative, and ‘heartbreaking’ as they ‘converse from the inside out… come alive in the back and forth of a mind attempting to understand what it means to be in relation to.’

Fourth Person Singular continues to blow open the relationship between self and world in a working through of lyric shame, bending poetic form through fragment, lyric essay, aphorisms mined from the unconscious, and pop-up associations, to explore the complexities, congruities, disturbances - as well as the beauty - involved in self-representation in language.

As unexpected as it is bold, Alsadir’s ambitious tour de force demands we pay new attention to the current conversation about the nature of lyric - and human relationships - in the 21st century.