This book is a compilation of Persian protest poems written in the last century. This collection comprises works that address the socio-political issues of their time, often focusing on government oppression of the people. Such topics can stimulate a reader's interest and empathy, possibly spurring him/her into action. Because of the lack of freedom of speech in Iran and constant fear of censorship, Persian poets use various tools, including rhyme, metaphor and symbolism, in order to bypass the government's censorship. The works of the following poets are included in this compilation: Mohammad Taqi Bahar, Simin Behbahani, Ali Akbar Saidi Sirjani, Nader Naderpour, Fereydoun Moshiri, Ahmad Shamlou, Mehdi Akhavan Salis, Parviz natel Khanlari, Hadi Khorsandi, Nasim Shomal, Karo Derderian, Hila Sedighi, Mohammad Reza Aali-payam, Iraj Mirza, Basij Khalkhali.
An analysis of the aesthetic, cultural and political aspects of alternative poetic movements and individual poets in three periods: the Constitutional Revolution (1900–1920), the post-constitutional era (1920–1940), and the ascendency of modernism (1940–1960). Farshad Sonboldel shines new light on the history of modern Persian poetry by re-imagining the roles that the aesthetic experimentations of alternative poets played in different phases of the literary revolution in modern Persian poetry. Dominant narratives portray modern Persian poetry as a gradual, rational, and moderate change in the classical regime of aesthetics as well as a response to – and reflection of – cultural and socio-political changes within Iranian society. They also disregard the significance of radical experiments by alternative poets and undervalue the part they played in the initiation and progress of the so-called "literary revolution." These mainstream narratives minimize the socio-political engagement of literary works with the direct reflection of the social reality, and thus neglect the way many alternative poems struggle with socio-political issues through deconstructing the old and constructing new aesthetic systems. Each chapter of The Rebellion of Forms in Modern Persian Poetry is centred around poems chosen for their potential to showcase notable experiments of pioneer movements and individuals in each given period. Examining the formal and thematic aspects of these poems, this book reformulates the story of modern Persian poetry and unravels the relationship between radical aesthetic changes in the practice of poetry and resistance against political and cultural domination in society.
Recent political developments, including the shadow of a new war, have obscured the fact that Iran has a long and splendid artistic tradition ranging from the visual arts to literature. Western readers may have some awareness of the Iranian novel thanks to a few breakout successes like Reading Lolita in Tehran and My Uncle Napoleon, but the country's strong poetic tradition remains little known. This anthology remedies that situation with a rich selection of recent poetry by Iranians living all around the world, including Amir-Hossein Afrasiabi: “Although the path / tracks my footsteps, / I don’t travel it / for the path travels me.” Varying dramatically in style, tone, and theme, these expertly translated works include erotic divertissements by Ziba Karbassi, rigorously formal poetry by Yadollah Royaii, experimental poems by Naanaam, powerful polemics by Maryam Huleh, and the personal-epic work of Shahrouz Rashid. Eclectic and accessible, these vibrant poems deepen the often limited awareness of Iranian identity today by not only introducing readers to contemporary Iranian poetry, but also expanding the canon of significant writing in the Persian language. Belonging offers a glimpse at a complex culture through some of its finest literary talents.
Routledge Handbook of Post Classical and Contemporary Persian Literature contains scholarly essays and sample texts related to Persian literature from the 17th century to the present day. It includes analyses of free verse poetry, short stories, novels, prison writings, memoirs, and plays. The chapters apply a disciplinary or interdisciplinary approach to the many movements, genres, and works of the long and evolving body of Persian literature produced in the Persianate World. These collections of scholarly essays and samples of Persian literary texts provide facts (general information), instructions (ways to understand, analyze, and appreciate this body of works), and the field’s state-of-the-art research (the problematics of the topics) regarding one of the most important and oldest literary traditions in the world. Thus, the Handbook’s chapters and related texts provide scholars, students, and admirers of Persian poetry and prose with practical and direct access to the intricacies of the Persian literary world through a chronological account of key moments in the formation of this enduring literary tradition. The related Handbook (also edited by Kamran Talattof ), Routledge Handbook of Ancient, Classical, and Late Classical Persian Literature covers Persian literary works from the ancient or pre-Islamic era to roughly the end of the 16th century.
The Essential Voices series intends to bridge English-language readers to cultures misunderstood and under- or misrepresented. It has at its heart the ancient idea that poetry can reveal our shared humanity. The anthology features 130 poets and translators from ten countries, including Garous Abdolmalekian, Kaveh Akbar, Kazim Ali, Reza Baraheni, Kaveh Bassiri, Simin Behbahani, Mark S. Burrows, Athena Farrokhzad, Forugh Farrokhzad, Persis Karim, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Sara Khalili, Mimi Khalvati, Esmail Khoi, Abbas Kiarostami, Fayre Makeig, Anis Mojgani, Yadollah Royai, Amir Safi, SAID, H.E. Sayeh, Roger Sedarat, Sohrab Sepehri, Ahmad Shamlu, Solmaz Sharif, Niloufar Talebi, Jean Valentine, Stephen Watts, Sholeh Wolpé, Nima Yushij, and many others. Praise Between arm-flexing states, the U.S. and Iran, the past burns and the future is held hostage. In a twilight present tense, the poets emerge, sure-footed and graceful, imagining another way, another vision of being. The range of these Iranian poets is prodigious and dizzying. Sometimes they "consider the saga of a bee / humming over minefields / in pursuit of a flower," sometimes they "bring your lips near / and pour your voice / into my mouth." Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora is a place where heartbreak and hope gather. At the shores of language, drink this bracing, slaking music. —Philip Metres, author of Shrapnel Maps Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora takes the extraordinary position that poetic arts from the homeland and diaspora should be read alongside each other. This vital book invites English-language readers to step into a lineage and tradition where poems—from playful to elegiac, prosaic to ornate—are fundamental to everyday living. It is the kind of book that requires two copies: one to give to a beloved, and one to keep for oneself. —Neda Maghbouleh, author of The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora offers a profoundly satisfying journey into the poetic canon of my homeland—an anthology with an ambition, expanse, depth, and diversity that truly earns its essential tag. So many poets I was hoping would be in here are here, from contemporary icons to new luminaries, plus I got to explore several poets I had never before read. Everyone from students of poetry to masters of the form should take this ride through the soul and psyche of Iran, which endures no matter where the border, beyond whatever the boundary! —Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity Iranians rely on poetry to give comfort, elevate the ordinary, and illuminate the darkness. Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora layers the work of the masters with fresh voices, using sensual imagery to piece together a society fractured by revolution, war, and exile. Let the poets lead you into an Iran beyond the news reports—a place where tenderness and humor and bitterness and melancholia balance together like birds on a wire, intricately connected and poised to take flight. —Tara Bahrampour, author of To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America
The Spiritual Poems of Rumi is a beautiful and elegantly illustrated gift book of Rumi's spiritual poems translated by Nader Khalili, geared for readers searching for a stronger spiritual core.
I Am the Beggar of the World presents an eye-opening collection of clandestine poems by Afghan women. Because my love's American, blisters blossom on my heart. Afghans revere poetry, particularly the high literary forms that derive from Persian or Arabic. But the poem above is a folk couplet—a landay, an ancient oral and anonymous form created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than 20 million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. War, separation, homeland, love—these are the subjects of landays, which are brutal and spare, can be remixed like rap, and are powerful in that they make no attempts to be literary. From Facebook to drone strikes to the songs of the ancient caravans that first brought these poems to Afghanistan thousands of years ago, landays reflect contemporary Pashtun life and the impact of three decades of war. With the U.S. withdrawal in 2014 looming, these are the voices of protest most at risk of being lost when the Americans leave. After learning the story of a teenage girl who was forbidden to write poems and set herself on fire in protest, the poet Eliza Griswold and the photographer Seamus Murphy journeyed to Afghanistan to learn about these women and to collect their landays. The poems gathered in I Am the Beggar of the World express a collective rage, a lament, a filthy joke, a love of homeland, an aching longing, a call to arms, all of which belie any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.
About These Crazy Nights, Moniro Ravanipour writes: "In 1981, less than three years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and in the heat of the Iran-Iraq War, I had become a night nurse in a hospital in Tehran, where every night I witnessed the arrival of the soldiers wounded on battlefronts. It was in the course of those nights that I also witnessed endless arguments and debates among patients with different ideologies and beliefs, including leftists, monarchists, nationalists, and staunch supporters of the new Islamic regime. Late at night, when the hospital ward was quiet, the patients would come and tell me stories about the battlefronts and their lives. The initial chapters of this novel, which was shaping in my mind at the time, were written in Iran and the concluding chapters were completed in the United States."This is a novel about the author's life, first in Iran and later as a refugee and immigrant in the United States. It is an important novel to be made available in English, especially in a country made up of immigrants, and in particular at this time. It tells us, in fact it actually shows us, why so many people around the world, whether from the Middle East, South America, or elsewhere, are inclined to leave their ancestral land, their hearth and home, and try, despite all the odds and obstacles, to take refuge to the land of the free.
