Aisha Sasha John reading from The Shining Material at the Spring 2011 Launch

In The Shining Material, Aisha Sasha John is a hostess; welcome to her house. Inside there is a party, a prayer, a painting that puts its fingers in your mouth – let it: in The Shining Material witness Aisha Sasha John braid self-portraiture, ekphrasis, and her own brand of psalm to create a collection of poems that is a tonic: dizzying in its open-mouthed, symphonic charge. These poems stage intimate encounters as they work against the language of the banal. Dancing across, between and at the interstices of the self, no poem is a single statement: they all recognize language as a perpetual subject of inquiry.