Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis
Vertigo of the Infinite

In the early morning quiet of Aspen Chapel, poets Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis present readings that orbit what G. K. Chesterton, quoting Charles Baudelaire’s description of Edgar Allan Poe, described as the “vertigo of the infinite,” a kind of dizziness that arises when the mind encounters the boundlessness of God, the cosmos, or the limits of language and perception.

Akbar’s work draws on a deep lineage of spiritual poetry, where language becomes a means of thinning the boundary between the self and the divine. His poems return to images and phrases with a near-liturgical cadence, pressing toward the limits of meaning as they navigate questions of faith and survival. Lewis, by contrast, explores speculative and surreal registers through mythic detours and recursive “what-if” structures that refract everyday experience through estrangement and wonder.

Following the readings, Kali Malone presents a concert on the Aspen Chapel’s newly restored pipe organ featuring the US premiere of Concentric Circles of The Choirs of Angels—a new composition in honor of Hildegard von Bingen, commissioned by the Vatican for the 2026 Venice Art Biennale. Malone’s performance emphasizes sustained tones and slowly evolving harmonic cycles that transform the chapel into a resonant sonic field. Malone’s performance and the readings by Akbar and Lewis converge into a shared landscape through incantatory intensity and extended, meditative arcs. As voices and music register against the charged stillness of the chapel and the surrounding mountain terrain, the program situates perception within a broader dramaturgy of place, where sound’s interaction with architecture fundamentally shapes experience.

Akbar and Lewis’s reading coincides with the publication of Lewis’s debut novel, Canon (Viking, 2026), and follows Akbar’s National Book Award–nominated Martyr! (Penguin Random House, 2024), which traces a grieving young man’s search for meaning.

Kaveh Akbar is a poet, novelist, and editor whose work grapples with questions of faith, addiction, belonging, and the search for meaning. He is the author of the poetry collections Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James, 2017) and Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf, 2021), as well as the bestselling novel Martyr! (Penguin Random House, 2024), a finalist for the National Book Award and named one of The New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year in 2024. Across poetry, fiction, and criticism, Akbar’s writing blends intimate confession with philosophical inquiry, often exploring spirituality, the ways language shapes belonging, and the enduring human desire for transcendence. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, among other publications. Akbar is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Poetry Foundation, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and has received honors including the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches at the University of Iowa.

Paige Lewis is a poet and writer whose work explores perception, vulnerability, intimacy, and the strange logic of everyday experience through inventive leaps of logic and language. Their work often moves between the cosmic and the everyday, drawing unexpected connections that illuminate the emotional and metaphysical dimensions of lived experience. They are the author of the novel Canon (Viking, 2026) and the poetry collection Space Struck (Sarabande, 2019). Lewis is a coeditor of Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance (Sarabande, 2023), an anthology examining recovery, longing, and transformation through contemporary poetry. Their poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2017, and elsewhere. Lewis teaches at the University of Iowa.

Vertigo of the Infinite is curated by Vic Brooks, AIR Senior Curatorial Advisor, and Mariana Fernández, AIR Project Curator. 

Technical direction by Ryan Jenkins. Special thanks to Peggy Burke, Reverend Nicholas Vesey, and the team at Aspen Chapel.

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