It's Not All Academic in Tehran

Among the many debates the occur frequently around poetry, there is the well worn question of what can poetry do… what is it good for anyway? Academics are not the only ones with a view in this question. Evidently Iranian authorities have one too and apparently are fearful of the power of the poetic word. Last week they stopped Simin Behbahani, an 82 year old woman who is nearly blind, from boarding a flight to Paris. Behbahani, is a poet, and known to some as the Lioness of Iran. She was taken away from the airport, interrogated throughout the night, then sent home without her passport.

Behbahani has written poetry in Iran for decades…through the reign of Iran’s Shah, during the Islamic Revolution, and the reign of the ayatollahs. She has been twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. She’s been outspoken for women’s rights. It has not however been easy for her to publish work in the past few years. The government has become more repressive in years towards writers in general. Her last work of poetry published required the removal of 40 poems or fragments thereof once the government censors finished with it.

After the disputed presidential election last summer and hundreds of thousands hit the streets in protest, prompting government crackdown and violence, Behbahani wrote a poem, “Stop Throwing My Country to the Wind.” People who have followed her for many years now have considered her as untouchable. There will be a lot of eyes on Tehran watching how she is treated from here on.

Therapy on the page

What do Latinos, poetry and therapists all have in common? They are all a part of Daniel Cubias' latest blog post on The Huffington Post. It's pretty funny.

It's said that one can observe Rumi poetry in many of Elham Moaidnia's paintings. Here is an article about her exhibition in Dubai as well as a look at the work of this Iranian born artist at her own web site.


"Poetry tries to bridge abyss lying between the name and the thing. That language is a problem is no news to poets." ~ Charles Semic

Welcome to the new year...

A little poetry news from around the world...

• More than 70 years after García Lorca’s death by a fascist firing squad at the start of the Spanish Civil War, the shadowy elf apparently inhabits García Lorca’s country me. Click
• Thousands of dissidents silenced under Argentina's military dictatorship - tortured, executed and made to "disappear" in the so-called Dirty War against dissent - are gaining new voice through poetry. Click
• For Ferlinghetti, poetry's "use" extends far beyond the personal into the political. "Poetry can save the world by transforming consciousness," he argues in "Poetry as Insurgent Art," a slim hardback pocketbook manifesto of prose epigrams, seemingly addressed to poets and those who might be. Click
• Ashbery's poetry makes you wonder what the wish to understand may protect you from; what the pleasures are of not understanding. Click
• Letters to the World, a poetry collection by the world's female poets, including an Iranian, is to be released early in the New Year. Click

Poetry in the News - Sunday Night

A few stories of interest -

• Letters of Ted Hughes reveals a fascinatingly honest man (click)
• Poetry of Protest - a story from Iran (click)
• John Ashbery & Robert Lowell - Two great American poets but very different (click)
• Robert Pinsky has perfected a kind of multicultural poetic shorthand (click)

The explosive possibility of mixing coffee with books

Iran is a country that is enormously literate. Iranians love for poetry spans centuries, but reading of all types of material is serious business in Iran and is evidenced by the vast numbers of book shops that are available to the public. In recent times, books and coffee shops have seen an increasing union in this country and that combination which allows for intellectual discussions between people milling around these shops have become a concern for an Iranian government that has a notable bent on suppression of the press and Internet traffic. So it probably should come as no surprise that the commingling coffee shops and book stores have been targeted by a new rule against the “mixing of trades.”

The possibility of people engaging in thought provoking discussion in groups where there is a presence of literature that could influence thought, evidently is a frightening thing to this otherwise repressive government. I guess you can just never be to careful of what might happen when thinking people put their heads together.

Persian poetry for dummies?

Yep... A U.S.-based Iranian foundation, Translation Project, plans to translate 100 top Iranian literary works into world’s mostly spoken languages. Seriously, they are also are partners to create a Persian poetry for dummies-style book that traces Persian poetry from its classical roots to today’s work and breaks it down for all a variety of audiences... second-generation Iranians, students, and poetry enthusiasts.