Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” It is in this vein that Sholeh Wolpé’s mesmerizing memoir in verse unfolds. In this lyrical and candid work, her fifth collection of poems, Wolpé invokes the abacus as an instrument of remembering. Through different countries and cultures, she carries us bead by bead on a journey of loss and triumph, love and exile. In the end, the tally is insight, not numbers, and we arrive at a place where nothing is too small for gratitude.
Abacus of Loss
$17.95
A Memoir in Verse
Sholeh Wolpé
124 pages, 5.5 × 8.5
March 2022
978-1-68226-198-9 (paper)
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian American poet, translator, and playwright. She is the award-winning author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, and The Conference of the Birds. Currently a writer-in-residence at the University of California, Irvine, Wolpé has lived in Iran, Trinidad, and the United Kingdom. She presently resides in Los Angeles and Barcelona.
“Even while we see in the calculus of her memoir the omnipresence of loss—of childhood, a country, a niece, a marriage— Wolpé insists on something that connects her to life, and to the poets of her country of origin—Rumi and Hafez—and it is, indeed, a kind of faith. In the final chapter, ‘The Tally’ (Bead 3), the final poem opens: ‘Listen / nothing’s too small / for gratitude.’ Wolpé calls us to listen. It is a memoir of remembrance and loss but also a memoir of wisdom and expansiveness evoked in small beads of intense beauty.”
—Persis Karim, World Literature Today, September/October 2022
“Wolpé’s work as a librettist fuels the shape and feeling of this book—the movements, the varying tempos and paces, the sense of story, and the precision of language translate to a narrative that stirs us emotionally. Sometimes familiar, other times a blossoming, This book also serves as a master plan for a collection that both adheres to a story and provides beautifully differing poetic strategies. Abacus of Loss finds its way under your skin before you know it—bead by bead.”
—Elmaz Abinader, PRISM International, August 2022
“Sholeh Wolpé’s Abacus of Loss is a brave, honest, and wise accounting of the inherent worth of a woman’s life and her magnificent power to adapt and thrive.”
—Linda Scheller, The Colorado Review, June 2022
“’Exile is a suitcase with a broken strap,’ writes Sholeh Wolpé in this autobiographical story that takes us across borders of language and time, from ‘a hill high above Tehran’ to the valley in Los Angeles. It is a journey where—we soon learn—‘loss is a language’ and the ‘fastest way out of a labyrinth / is up.’ So much to love about this brave and musical storytelling. I for one admire how much Wolpé loves our days, how much tenderness and insight each moment’s turn offers. There is much gusto, too, and such style and verve. ‘Make my curly hair your flag,’ the poet tells us, as she guides us on the trip via ‘boats crusted with our stories.’ Abacus of Loss is a terrific book, thrilling with lyric as it casts a narrative spell. Bravo!”
—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa
“The poet tallies her losses—loss of dear ones, loss of home and country, loss of language and faith. Yet, recollecting her life memory by memory, Sholeh Wolpé finds ways to love and to be thankful. She is truly a daughter of Rumi.”
—Maxine Hong Kingston, author of I Love a Broad Margin to My Life
“Sholeh Wolpé’s Abacus of Loss is a manual for living. How to stay permeable to wonder and joy in a world that so aggressively conspires against them? In a world that can be so corrosive to grace? In one poem Wolpé writes, ‘Our passports lie on the yellow Formica table / side by side, two countries at war.’ In another, ‘God is just a vagabond / peddling bombs and swords.’ There is a remarkable braid here of a woman’s journey through a world run by men drunk on their own power, through a cosmos governed by a God apparently hidden by his. Abacus of Loss is a remarkable achievement, an unforgettable text.”
—Kaveh Akbar, author of Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf
“Loss fulfills the memoir’s promise to show us memory at work. The disjunctive, essayistic collage of moments feels more like the experience of memory than we are used to getting from conventional narrative prose. And like memory, it folds in on itself, as Wolpé’s investigation of loss shows us that, often, what has been lost is a past already suffused with a sense of loss. We mourn the young adulthood when we mourned the teenage years when we mourned our childhood when we mourned our lost innocence. A brilliant book.”
—Tom Lutz, Los Angeles Review of Books founding editor
A Book & Its Author Podcast – 031: Abacus Of Loss: A Memoir In Verse by Sholeh Wolpé
