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Sin
Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad
Translated by Sholeh Wolpé
Foreword by Alicia Ostriker
Iran’s Rebel Woman Poet
“Sholeh Wolpé’s translations are hypnotic
in their beauty and force. This book will be treasured by
readers who crave not a clash of cultures but a connection.”
—From the foreword
“In a world where cultures and religions are recklessly
facing off, Sholeh Wolpé writes careful poems that
cast a light on some of what we all hold in common.”
—Billy Collins, on The Scar Saloon
Sin:
Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad:
Poetic modernism came to Iran as late as the 1960s, when Farrokhzad
(1935-67) streaked across the literary horizon. Rebellious
from childhood, Farrokhzad entered young womanhood as many
more were to do in the West a decade later. She insisted on
her sexuality and wrote of it rapturously in her earliest
poems, which immediately appeal in their celebration of lovemaking,
including sexual objectification of the male. Of course, she
became a scandal, one that endures to this day. A family member
of Wolpé's, when told that she was translating Farrokhzad,
responded,'Why
are you wasting your time on that whore?' The answer is obvious
in the poems, which become more powerfully compelling as they
take up the issues of life as a woman in modern Iran, issues
that are realized through feelings and predicaments with which
any Western reader can sympathize. Meanwhile, the poems' long
lines and musical repetitions sweep the reader away as effectively
as any American projective verse (the Whitman to Hart Crane
to Ginsberg tradition) or Vicente Huidobro's Chilean modernist
classic Altazor (1931).
–Booklist
For the first time, the work of Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad
is being brought to English-speaking readers through the perspective
of a translator who is a poet in her own right, fluent in
both Persian and English and intimately familiar with each
culture. Sin includes the entirety of Farrokhzad’s last
book, numerous selections from her fourth and most enduring
book, Reborn, and selections from her earlier work and creates
a collection that is true to the meaning, the intention, and
the music of the original poems.
Farrokhzad was the most significant female Iranian poet of
the twentieth century, as revolutionary as Russia’s
Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva and America’s Plath and Sexton.
She wrote with a sensuality and burgeoning political consciousness
that pressed against the boundaries of what could be expressed
by a woman in 1950s and 1960s Iran. She paid a high price
for her art, shouldering the disapproval of society and her
family, having her only child taken away, and spending time
in mental institutions. Farrokhzad died in a car accident
in 1967 at the age of thirty-two. Sin is a tribute to the
work and life of this remarkable poet.
Sholeh Wolpé is the author of The
Scar Saloon and Rooftops of Tehran. Her poems,
translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many publications.
She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Alicia Ostriker is the author of eleven volumes
of poetry, most recently No Heaven.
October
5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 160 pages
$24.95 cloth
ISBN 978-1-55728-861-5 | 1-55728-861-5
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