RaveFieldsOne senses that Akbar’s journey to sobriety is a sort of out-of-body experience in which he must somehow reclaim ownership of his own corporality to truly heal. Still, the process is ongoing and always undoing itself, as he alternately embraces and dismisses his physical reality. As the poems stretch onward, the reader senses that Akbar’s vacillating disassociations are much more than symptoms of his disease. As he continues to step out of himself to view himself as Other, he discovers who he wants to become. It seems that by observing himself from the viewpoint of a bystander he escapes the fear of self that is intrinsic to his addiction. At the same time, he contrasts this depersonalization with an oddly tender personification of addiction. He recalls with bittersweet nostalgia memories in which addiction appears as another person, one with whom he feels a sort of camaraderie ... Even the pace of the collection is both unpredictable and rhythmically pleasing; it deftly alternates between racing descriptions and slow epiphanies. Its rhythm feels vaguely nostalgic for the way it echoes the peaks and valleys of one’s own experience with suffering ... he demonstrates with otherworldly imagery that those who suffer possess an astonishing sensitivity to beauty, able to find it in even the saddest places. Indeed, Calling a Wolf a Wolf does precisely that.
