You might not think polo — like polo with the horses and the sticks — is the most natural possible metaphor for love. According to Persian tradition, you would definitely be wrong.
Tagged with Writing …
Silence and Speech: Rumi’s Call to the Other World
‘Be quiet!’ Rumi orders himself on numerous occasions. But he never can quite seem to listen. In the following poem, through a series of commands and rhetorical questions, Rumi (Molānā) implores his listener not to grieve over his death, and, by analogy, not to dread the reader’s own death. He recasts the grief of death … Continue reading
Minimalist Iranian Writing: Rasool Yoonan
Walking in the Sky “There’s no way back.” “What do you mean?” “Don’t you see everything’s covered in fog?” “Well, I’m going back.”
Tehran, 2006
Everyone has experienced Blue Car Syndrome before in some form or another. You buy a blue car, now you can’t stop seeing them. I’ve taken that one step farther and described what I call ‘Linguistic Blue Car Syndrome,’ where, as a language learner, you learn a word or phrase, and suddenly can’t stop hearing … Continue reading
‘Attar, Reprobate of His Age
Why would Farid al-Din ‘Attar, one of the most pious and moralistic Persian poets, call himself essentially the biggest scalawag of them all? The answer lies in the themes explored in the sonnet I’ve translated here for you. ‘Attar, Rumi, and other followers of the Sufi or Islamic Mystic tradition were really concerned with what … Continue reading
Writing as Healing: Goli Taraghi and her “First Day”
“The desire to write gnaws at me on the inside. Words won’t leave me alone. They come after me in dreams, like an army of ants, crawling on my lips and eyelids.”
Verses Collected on the Occasion of the Vernal Equinox
Do you like my Victorian-esque title? I thought it would bring some mock-stateliness to what is otherwise a very simple post. All that to say, Happy Persian New Year! Enjoy these spring-themed verses I have collected and translated from some of my favorite classical Persian poets.
Simin Behbahani, Poetess and Activist, Passes Away at 87
The world of Iranian literature lost a major player yesterday with the death of Simin Behbahani, a lifelong poet and human rights activist.
11 Books to Get You Started on Persian Literature
People are always asking me, “What should I read from Iran?” Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. One person asked me, one time. That was my 88-year-old neighbor, who is awesome, and more well read than you and I can ever hope to be. But even if you never asked the question, you may … Continue reading
Tahere Qurrat al-‘Ayn: A Babi Poetess
What is it that makes something “untranslatable?” Is it the vocabulary with no easy analogue? Does one language lack a concept the other uses regularly? Maybe one language is more specific in terms of gender or number. Or maybe, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, there’s just too many flipping fish. Technically, everything is translatable … Continue reading
Persian is Sugar 