Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad

I am not fluent enough in Farsi to comment on how well Shohreh Wolpe translated and selected the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad and I do also appreciate the biographical information she provided about Forough as well as her motivation for translating and creating this book in an effort to demystify and undemonize Iran in the eyes of the West. It is so ironic that Iran which suffered under the US puppet Pahlavi regime has been so mercilessly targeted by the West in an attempt to cast Iran in the worst possible light patently ignoring the body of great modern writing and film that has been generated there in the 19th,20th and 21st centuries. As my friend Shirin Neshat said about her recent film "Women Without Men," the most amazing thing for her was that she was even able to find distribution for her film at all in the USA due to a general lack of any real interest in anything Iranian here but oil or anti Iranian propaganda.There have been far too many expatriate Iranians, especially women, who have cashed in on the anti Iranian propaganda and written skewed and slanted melodramas damning Iran and ignoring all but the the worst elements of that culture and society, leaving us to think that it is essentially reduced to a medieval feudal ignorant theocracy of religious fundamentalists and extremists, which bears little resemblance to Iran today. The post election fraud protest by millions of Iranians in Iran should have been enough to demonstrate to the entire world that we are not dealing with a subservient homogenous, monofaceted society, who have all bought in to the tenets of the IRI. There is only one motivation for painting Iran that way, which is to justify in the mind of the American public an invasion and recolonization. I share the same motivation of the author, which is what drove me to write my own book about my experiences in Iran where I spent 5 of the most incredible years of my life. Three summers ago in 2008, I went back to Iran for the first time since the revolution and had an incredible awesome time and one of the goals of my trip was to visit the grave of Forough Farrokhzad at the Zahir Ol Dowleh cemetery which I did. That cemetery which amazingly belongs to a private family is filled with the graves of some of the best contemporary poets, writers and musicians of Iran. Niloufar Talebi with her Translation Project and others like the Houshang Golshiri Foundation have made it their mission to translate contemporary Persian authors into English. On my website I started to an album of photographs of as many contemporary writers and poets as I could find and it is over 356 so far of which only a handful have been translated into English. My friend Shahrnush Parsipur who is arguably the greatest living contemporary Iranian writer has only had three of her 13 novels translated.Well about Forough. She makes me think of the expression "Only the good die young!" I can't picture her in old age, can you? She epitomized youth and its yearnings which is why she has such a great appeal especially with young ladies in Iran, many of whom know her poems by heart. You have only to mention her name and they begin reciting "In a room the size of one solitude."Forough had a great courage when one reflects upon her affair with one of Iran's greatest film makers Ebrahim Golestan, who was married. Although in the West we pride ourselves as progressive versus Iran, sex scandals still hit the media hard on a regular basis. Her love was true and a thing of beauty not soiled like the affair of our former president. Forough had to put up with a lot of abuse from the double standard male dominated society to pursue her love and her artistic career. Her own son showed acceptance and love for her.As far as her poetry, her metaphores are unbelievable. She feels and experiences what the rest of us know only intellectually that all things are connected at the molecular and spiritual level. When she swims in a pond or river, she and the water make love to each other, when the sun is setting, the sky and the earth merge in love. When she writes of happiness, we can feel it. When she writes of pain or loneliness we can feel it. When she writes of the discrimination women experience at the hands of men, we feel it. Her poetry seems so smooth and effortless as it conquers universes and challenges conventions and institutions in cosmic terms. In "If I were God" she talks of going to bed with Satan to protest prudishness. In "On Loving" the last lines tell us that she is fully aware of the vulnerability of love and accepts that the end of its road is not known but it needs no known ending, the purpose of love is love, like the Raison d'Etre, I think therefore I am.Like so many other stellar personalities, she was a shooting star, whose short spectacular performance reached its climax and passed into eternity, like the girl in "Women Without Men" who first turned into a tree and then dissolved into a cascade of feathery seeds to be borne on the wind and the river to the four corners of the earth.No wonder they refer to her as "The Eternal Farrokhzad"

value for inspiring young readers on what women go thru in middle east islam

The book was in a beautiful condition. Lovely.

I can't believe I stumbled upon this gem, thanks to a recent Paris Review feature that introduced me to Forugh Farrokhzad. Alas, I'll never be able to read these poems in their native language, but this translation is so beautiful that i cannot help but place all my trust in it. This is a book that i won't be lending or giving away; this one has been promoted to that coveted real estate of the nightstand, where books are read and re-read for as long as i live....

It is a good effort at translating by Shohleh Wolpe. I appreciate her talent and it is certainly nice to have Forough accessible to an English-speaking audience. Like another review mentions, it is obvious that some license has been taken by the translator in translating the poems but Wolpe *does* add a disclaimer at the end basically saying the same thing.My problem with the book is the political overtones that the translator introduces. Once again, she acknowledges this and actually states that her main reason for undertaking this translation effort is in response to Iran being labeled as part of the "Axis of Evil". She wants to make Iran more accessible and less intimidating to the West. However, she also ends the biography section by saying the Farrokhzad poetry was banned under the Islamic Republic which had no biographical merit as the poet passed away 12 years before the 1979 Revolution.Farrokhzad's poetry is beautiful and while it is certainly meaningful to many Iranians in their current political situation, it seems like Wolpe is superimposing her interpretation of the poetry through her translation. Sometimes it feels like too much of her personality and her relationship with the poetry is coming through the poems. It can be very distracting.Overall, the selection of poems is wonderful and the reader is able to see the growth of Farrokhzad as a poet throughout her short poetic career. It is a good effort and worth the read if only for the biography section.

This is the most beautiful thing I have read in years. Farrokhzad's poems contain the most original presentation of ideas and concepts through language that I have read - perhaps ever.Based on other reviews, if you are a native Persian speaker concerned with exact authenticity in translation, you might have a few issues with this book.If you are an English speaker who would like to be blown away by some amazing poetry and simply exquisite use of language, in this case the English language, you will never regret this purchase.Beautiful.

A great read at the end of the evening. Poems full of passion and defiance.

I was thrilled when I found this book. In our Non-Western World Literature class, we read poets such as Forugh Farrokhzad. THis is an excellent collection of her work. Readers will be surprized at her insight into the lives of women. As a country we have been isolated from the creative talent that Iran contains. I found this very enlightening.

Forugh was an enlightened woman, a poet, open minded, creative and passionate. She emerged in the traditional Iranian society of the 1950s and her poems about love, lust and passion still resonate today.

Compré este libro después de oír su poema "Porque he pecado" en la radio. Entonces vinos las protestas masivas por parte de las mujeres de Irán. Esta poeta escribió en los años sesenta del siglo XX y era una rebelde quien pagó un precio muy alto por su creatividad durante su vida. Resultó que perdió su hijo y su familia y al fin se trasladó a Los Estados Unidos. Me encanta su poesía en este libro y su ejemplo como artista iraní del siglo XX

I am a musician and composer and I needed translations of Forough Poetry to be able to introduce some of the work I had composed on her poetry to some non-Farsi speakers.The translations were helpful for giving an idea of what the lines were about, but there seems to be some poetical spirit lacking; meaning I could see that the emotional-existential layers were not fully communicated.

Translating poetry is almost always an impossible task. But not this time. This book offers a masterful translation of Forough Farrokhzad's life-altering poetry. The reader does get the true sense of the poems while reading her poetry in a language other than Forough's.

Wunderschöne Gedichte der bedeutendsten modernen Lyrikerin des Iran in ausgezeichneter Übersetzung einer iranischen Dichterin im Exil