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Resonant Threads

Poems of Love, Resilience, and Wisdom

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A powerful debut poetry collection about love, loss, courage, family, justice, and the quiet work of becoming whole.

Born in Iran, shaped by revolution, wars, upheavals, and poetry, Amin writes poems that carry the weight of two countries. Resonant Threads opens on a Minneapolis street where federal agents killed two citizens and closes in a winter room where a newborn sleeps against her father’s chest. Between them, the book traces how a conscious human life is built, remembered in persistent threads, and is passed on. Drawing on the Persian classical tradition (Hafez, Rumi, Sa’adi, Ferdowsi, Shamlu) and the witness poets of the twentieth century (Akhmatova, Miłosz, Heaney), the collection is written in a plainspoken, unrhymed, direct voice shaped by two countries, two languages, and a lifetime at the intersection of public duty and private grief.

<em>“Writing in the cadence of clarity, without affectation or embellishment, these poems are rooted in urgent witness, global in graciousness and gratitude, and deeply uplifting in our tremulous moment.”</em>

— Naomi Shihab Nye

Description

In Resonant Threads, Massoud Amin gathers poems written at the crossing point of public witness and private renewal. Born in Iran and shaped by a life in America, Amin writes from the space between countries, languages, generations, and moral obligations. These poems move from war and exile to fatherhood and family, from grief to resilience, from the weight of history to the small daily practices that keep the heart alive.

Thread is the book’s central image: the thread between memory and responsibility, parent and child, wound and wisdom, silence and speech, Iran and America, the self and the larger human family. Across seven sections, Amin explores the fire of survival, the strength of women who hold families and futures together, the renewal of Nowruz, the discipline of truth, and the courage required to remain tender in a harsh world.

Several poems include Persian/Farsi lines in the original script, allowing the music of the language to remain present on the page. The result is a collection that feels both intimate and expansive: rooted in one life, yet speaking to anyone who has carried grief, sought justice, loved deeply, or tried to begin again.

Product Details

PublishedJune 10, 2026
ImprintCalumet Editions
LanguageEnglish
Print length156
ISBN-13978-1962834780
Dimensions5 x 0.39 x 8 inches