Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Organic Sensuality
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 todemystify 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, monofacetedsociety, 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 onthe wind and the river to the four corners of the earth.
No wonder they refer to her as "The Eternal Farrokhzad"

I appreciate the effort - it's better than nothing
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.

an excellent collection of a suppressed poet
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.

Very good but could be better
"Sin" has a very nice selection of the great Forough's poems. The translation is "generally" well.
The reason that I gave 4 stars, is due to some details in the poem translation. I read the Persian version as well and I could understand all in the English translation. But for most of the friends didn't know Persian, the translation was sometimes far from the original version; plus the semi harmonic intonation in the poetry hasn't been well respected in the translation.
Although I'm saying it could be better, I very much recommend this book, its very valuable and worth it to spend time and attention. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Alicia (Suskin) Ostriker, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 3688 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

A collection with a long reach
The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present, offers just what the title declares.A collection of poems, from the early period of Hebrew to modern times that have some sort of female viewpoint.

This is an anthology, so there is no consistent view of what "feminism" is, nor is there any attempt at a thematic focal point. Rather, the reader weaves his or her way through many voices, finding surprises here and there, and a great range of expression. Except for the fact that these are female voices speaking, we could almost drop the feminist label.If there was not a dominant, male voice in Hebrew poetics, this fine collection could easily be called Hebrew Humanist Poems from Antiquity to the Present.

This is a bi-lingual edition, so the reader with some Hebrew can also take a crack at the originals, and compare them to the final translations.

An important work, spanning biblical to contemporary poets
This is an impressive collection of known works and newly discovered feminist pieces in their original Hebrew and in stunning translations.Biblical and rabbinic literature is culled for feminist voices; midievalliterature from around the world is mined; 20th century Hebrew poets,including a good number of current writers, are represented.There aremany poems that you'd expect to find in a collection like this, and manythat will be new to you.Bravo to the editors, themselves poets andtranslators, for this landmark contribution to Hebrew feminist literature. ... Read more

Product Description
The Turnpike. The Parkway. The Shore. Malls. Mobsters. Bad accents. No other state in America elicits reaction quite like New Jersey. Though the Garden State has risen to the top of pop culture consciousness, its significant and diverse literary culture has gone sorely under the radar--until now.

What's Your Exit? A Literary Detour through New Jersey is a collection of contemporary fiction, poetry, and essay inspired by a place that piques the curiosity of all who have set foot in it...and those who haven't. Themes of family, friendship, sex, love, fear, nostalgia and longing populate this anthology, which features forty-nine writers whose visions of the Jersey landscape are as eclectic and beautiful, and as unnerving and mysterious and bold as the place that unites them. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

an artfully curated representation of NJ's long-standing literary tradtion.
In this post-Sopranos age where New Jersey is most often seen through the lens of reality tv shows littered with big hair, acrylic nails and orange tans, this anthology is a much needed reminder that the "armpit of America" has long been an epicenter of literary activity, from Walt Whitman to the beat poets to to current greats like Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Pinsky and Tom Perotta. Editors Joe Vallese and Alica Beale, both talented emerging writers and New Jersey natives, have put together a superb collection of work by established and new writers, organized by theme, genre and, of course, exits off the turnpike and the parkway. Anyone who has ever lived, visited, or driven through New Jersey (the rest of the state doesn't smell like the turnpike, we swear!) should pick up a copy of this book. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Midstream, published by Theodor Herzl Foundation on May 1, 2005. The length of the article is 3783 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Shulamith Hareven's The Miracle Hater: a feminist novel?(Book Review)
Author: Alicia Ostriker
Publication: Midstream (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2005
Publisher: Theodor Herzl Foundation
Volume: 51Issue: 3Page: 31(4)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This book is a celebration of the sixth anniversary selection of the best work from twenty-six past and present members of the US1 Poet's Cooperative in New Jersey. ... Read more