Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora

Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora

Author: Christopher Nelson

Publisher: Green Linden Press

Published: 2021-09-01

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 099922638X

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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


Belonging

Belonging

Author: Niloufar Talebi

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2008-08-05

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9781556437120

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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.


Recasting Persian Poetry

Recasting Persian Poetry

Author: Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak

Publisher: Oneworld Publications

Published: 2012-11-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781780742496

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Using a semiotic model of poetic change, Recasting Persian Poetry presents a critical history of the evolution of Persian poetry in modern Iran. Iran's contact with Europe in the nineteenth century produced largely imaginary ideas about European culture and literature. In a series of textual manoeuvres and cultural contestations, successive generations of Iranian intellectuals sought to recast the classical tradition in a mold at once modern and relevant to their concerns. In particular, Karimi proposes a revision of the view that sets the Modernist poet Nima Yushij as the single-handed inventor of 'New Poetry'. This view, he argues, has resulted in an exaggerated sense of the aesthetic gulf between the modernist poetry of Iran and classical Persian poetry. Through a number of close readings of works by Nima's predecessors, Karimi makes visible a century-old Persian poetic tradition with Nima as its culmination.


Emerson in Iran

Emerson in Iran

Author: Roger Sedarat

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2019-05-31

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1438474873

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Emerson in Iran is the first full-length study of Persian influence in the work of the seminal American poet, philosopher, and translator, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Extending the current trend in transnational studies back to the figural origins of both the United States and Iran, Roger Sedarat's insightful comparative readings of Platonism and Sufi mysticism reveal how Emerson managed to reconcile through verse two countries so seemingly different in religion and philosophy. By tracking various rhetorical strategies through a close interrogation of Emerson's own writings on language and literary appropriation, Sedarat exposes the development of a latent but considerable translation theory in the American literary tradition. He further shows how generative Persian poetry becomes during Emerson's nineteenth century, and how such formative effects continue to influence contemporary American poetry and verse translation.


The Forbidden

The Forbidden

Author: Sholeh Wolpé

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1609173295

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During the 1979 revolution, Iranians from all walks of life, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, socialist, or atheist, fought side-by-side to end one tyrannical regime, only to find themselves in the clutches of another. When Khomeini came to power, freedom of the press was eliminated, religious tolerance disappeared, women’s rights narrowed to fit within a conservative interpretation of the Quran, and non-Islamic music and literature were banned. Poets, writers, and artists were driven deep underground and, in many cases, out of the country altogether. This moving anthology is a testament to both the centuries-old tradition of Persian poetry and the enduring will of the Iranian people to resist injustice. The poems selected for this collection represent the young, the old, and the ancient. They are written by poets who call or have called Iran home, many of whom have become part of a diverse and thriving diaspora.


Modern Persian Poetry

Modern Persian Poetry

Author: Mahmud Kianush

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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Iran and the Persian language have a rich poetic heritage, extending for more than a thousand years from the classical era of 10-17th centuries to the present day. The greatest classical poet was Shams od-Din Mohammad Hâfez and this imaginative selection opens with poets inspired by Hâfez; he then moves on to Yushij, Shamlu and other poets of the Shah's time, to the left-wing poets who rebelled against the Shah and also against the Islamic Revolution. Women poets are included, such as Forugh Farrokhzâd, Shâdâb Vajdi and Minâ Asadi. Mahmud Kianush also contributes a long introduction about Persian culture and language.


Modern Poetry of Iran

Modern Poetry of Iran

Author:

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 99

ISBN-13: 9788129129253

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Modern Poetry of Iran is an anthology of more than eighty-five acclaimed works of renowned Iranian poets. The book comprises Persian poems, carefully selected and translated into English by Aziz Mahdi, a Persian scholar from India.


Modern Iranian Poetry

Modern Iranian Poetry

Author: Saeed Saeedpour

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2001-08

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 059516014X

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Modern Iranian Poetry offers new horizons of poetic vision and imagination by major contemporary Iranian poets such as Nima, Shamlu, Forugh,Sohrab.The poetic English rendition provides the English reading public with a unique insight into the subconscious culture of a nation that has mystified the world. Poignant and lyrical, the poems generate visionary moments of clairvoyance for the experience of post modern life with all its wonder and complexity.Iranian poet and translator, Saeed Saeedpoor studied English literature in the U.S., where he lived for 12 years. He has won high critical acclaim for his poetic and precise renditions of Persian poetry into English and the reverse, published in meticulous bilingual editions. His translations include: From Shakespeare to Eliot and Beyond: Anthology of English poetry presented in Persian. Our Voice Today: Modern Iranian poetry rendered into English. Emily Dickinson’s selected poems & letters Khayyam’s Rubaiyat: An authentic rendition into English Quatrains (Unesco edition) Ahmad Shamlu’s selected poems( to be published)


Shahnameh

Shahnameh

Author: Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-03-08

Total Pages: 1041

ISBN-13: 1101993235

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The definitive translation by Dick Davis of the great national epic of Iran—now newly revised and expanded to be the most complete English-language edition A Penguin Classic Dick Davis—“our pre-eminent translator from the Persian” (The Washington Post)—has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece, adding more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis’s elegant combination of prose and verse allows the poetry of the Shahnameh to sing its own tales directly, interspersed sparingly with clearly marked explanations to ease along modern readers. Originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan in the tenth century, the Shahnameh is among the greatest works of world literature. This prodigious narrative tells the story of pre-Islamic Persia, from the mythical creation of the world and the dawn of Persian civilization through the seventh-century Arab conquest. The stories of the Shahnameh are deeply embedded in Persian culture and beyond, as attested by their appearance in such works as The Kite Runner and the love poems of Rumi and Hafez. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran

City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran

Author: Setrag Manoukian

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-03-12

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1136627170

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This book presents a cultural history of modern Iran through the perspective of the city. Addressing the relationship between history, poetry and politics in Iran, the author demonstrates that the question of knowledge is crucial to an understanding of the political and existential dimensions of life in Iran today.