Daniel Khalastchi is a first-generation Iraqi Jewish American. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University. He lives in Milwaukee where he is also the co-editor of Rescue Press.

Books by Daniel Khalastchi:

Other poems on the web by Daniel Khalastchi:
"Poem: (With It We Bury)"
"Collective Security"
"I think maybe I am decomposing"
"Hands on Fire"
"What They've Told My Sister"
Four poems
Two poems

About Manoleria:

"In Manoleria, the body, broken apart 'in elegant stress,' recongregates. Formally, the poet is taking us through the emotional work of picking up pieces. Despite the splintering, despite the hemorrhage, somehow 'all is accounted for.' A cardinal debut. . . ."
—D. A. Powell

"With composure so unflinching as to be unnerving, the speaker of this mysterious, deft collection explicates what would be, in other hands, unimaginable and unspeakable atrocity. . . . Khalastchi uses a steady, steady hand to reach into the quiver."
—Robyn Schiff

"Part nightmare journal, part survivor's narrative, this haunting volume recounts one soul's journey through the selva oscura within. . . . [A] music emerges that bears ultimate promise, for 'somewhere inside I hear calling a shepherd.'"
—Srikanth Reddy

"Uncertain as to whether they are buried or planted, growing or dead, the poems in Manoleria know when they are pushed up out of the dirt by some unholy hand what they can claim is a world punctuated by gasps, loneliness, and shadows that may be nothing more than wreckage. These poems remind me of Beckett’s Lucky (slave, clown, stranger, preacher); they are as terrifying and beautiful. Like Lucky they bring with them an indecipherable hope. Like Lucky they know to be fully alive means to embrace the soft panic only language can bring."
—Sabrina Orah Mark