Situating Nima's life firmly within the context of 20th century Iranian history this book contributes to an emerging trend in literary scholarship on Persian literature that views Persian poetry as a living and constantly evolving tradition rather than an icon of some fading glory.

Situating Nima's life firmly within the context of 20th century Iranian history this book contributes to an emerging trend in literary scholarship on Persian literature that views Persian poetry as a living and constantly evolving tradition rather than an icon of some fading glory.

This is a collection of the letters of Nima Yushij (1897-1960), the prominent 20th-century Iranian poet who is regarded as the founder and father of modern Persian poetry. Nima Yushij devoted his life to his art and advocating his innovative style in poetry, mostly through his correspondences. The letters in "The Neighbor Says" are addressed to an imaginary neighbour or acquaintance. Although in many instances he comments on specific poems or stories that are assumed to have been sent to him by the person he addresses in his letters, it gradually becomes clear to the reader that "the Neighbour" might not exist, but that he might be an alter ego of the poet, a device with which the author can expound his ideas about poetry. The importance of the letters lies in the fact that Nima Yushij employs them as a vehicle through which to express his philosophy, ideas and vision for a modern, innovative and revolutionary approach to the art of poetry. In these letters which may serve as his "manifesto" for modern Persian poetry, Nima Yushij discusses, often in detail, what he means by modern prosody; why he more or less but not always abandons the classical rules of versification; how his vision and understanding of modern life and modern man differs from that of his predecessors, (ie: Persian poetic giants such as Rumi, Hafez, Sa'di, Ferdowsi and Nezami). This is the literary tradition that Nima Yushij challenges. He challenges the traditions in the society and the traditional ways not only by writing poetry that sounds strange and unfamiliar; is difficult to understand, as many of his contemporary readers were inclined to believe, and breaking the traditional rules of prosody and diction; but also introducing his own rules of prosody and a new poetic vocabulary. The volume also includes an essay on an important, usually neglected aspect of the writings of Nima Yushij, namely his short stories, which should be considered indispensable to an under-standing and appreciation of his poetry.

The Essential Voices series intends to bridge English-language readers to cultures misunderstood and under- or misrepresented. It has at its heart the ancient idea that poetry can reveal our shared humanity. The anthology features 130 poets and translators from ten countries, including Garous Abdolmalekian, Kaveh Akbar, Kazim Ali, Reza Baraheni, Kaveh Bassiri, Simin Behbahani, Mark S. Burrows, Athena Farrokhzad, Forugh Farrokhzad, Persis Karim, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Sara Khalili, Mimi Khalvati, Esmail Khoi, Abbas Kiarostami, Fayre Makeig, Anis Mojgani, Yadollah Royai, Amir Safi, SAID, H.E. Sayeh, Roger Sedarat, Sohrab Sepehri, Ahmad Shamlu, Solmaz Sharif, Niloufar Talebi, Jean Valentine, Stephen Watts, Sholeh Wolpé, Nima Yushij, and many others. Praise Between arm-flexing states, the U.S. and Iran, the past burns and the future is held hostage. In a twilight present tense, the poets emerge, sure-footed and graceful, imagining another way, another vision of being. The range of these Iranian poets is prodigious and dizzying. Sometimes they "consider the saga of a bee / humming over minefields / in pursuit of a flower," sometimes they "bring your lips near / and pour your voice / into my mouth." Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora is a place where heartbreak and hope gather. At the shores of language, drink this bracing, slaking music. —Philip Metres, author of Shrapnel Maps Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora takes the extraordinary position that poetic arts from the homeland and diaspora should be read alongside each other. This vital book invites English-language readers to step into a lineage and tradition where poems—from playful to elegiac, prosaic to ornate—are fundamental to everyday living. It is the kind of book that requires two copies: one to give to a beloved, and one to keep for oneself. —Neda Maghbouleh, author of The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora offers a profoundly satisfying journey into the poetic canon of my homeland—an anthology with an ambition, expanse, depth, and diversity that truly earns its essential tag. So many poets I was hoping would be in here are here, from contemporary icons to new luminaries, plus I got to explore several poets I had never before read. Everyone from students of poetry to masters of the form should take this ride through the soul and psyche of Iran, which endures no matter where the border, beyond whatever the boundary! —Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity Iranians rely on poetry to give comfort, elevate the ordinary, and illuminate the darkness. Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora layers the work of the masters with fresh voices, using sensual imagery to piece together a society fractured by revolution, war, and exile. Let the poets lead you into an Iran beyond the news reports—a place where tenderness and humor and bitterness and melancholia balance together like birds on a wire, intricately connected and poised to take flight.  —Tara Bahrampour, author of To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America

Using a semiotic model of poetic change, Recasting Persian Poetry presents a critical history of the evolution of Persian poetry in modern Iran. Iran's contact with Europe in the nineteenth century produced largely imaginary ideas about European culture and literature. In a series of textual manoeuvres and cultural contestations, successive generations of Iranian intellectuals sought to recast the classical tradition in a mold at once modern and relevant to their concerns. In particular, Karimi proposes a revision of the view that sets the Modernist poet Nima Yushij as the single-handed inventor of 'New Poetry'. This view, he argues, has resulted in an exaggerated sense of the aesthetic gulf between the modernist poetry of Iran and classical Persian poetry. Through a number of close readings of works by Nima's predecessors, Karimi makes visible a century-old Persian poetic tradition with Nima as its culmination.

Confronting nationalistic and nativist interpreting practices in Persianate literary scholarship, Persian Literature as World Literature makes a case for reading these literatures as world literature-as transnational, worldly texts that expand beyond local and national penchants. Working through an idea of world literature that is both cosmopolitan and critical of any monologic view on globalization, the contributors to this volume revisit the early and contemporary circulation of Persianate literatures across neighboring and distant cultures, and seek innovative ways of developing a transnational Persian literary studies, engaging in constructive dialogues with the global forces surrounding, and shaping, Persianate societies and cultures.

Through an original and close reading of the key literature regarding both revolutionary violence and nonviolence, this book collapses the widely-assumed concepts of violence and nonviolence as mutually exclusive. By revealing that violence and nonviolence are braided concepts arising from human action, Peyman Vahabzadeh submits that in many cases the actions deemed to be either violent or nonviolent might actually produce outcomes that are not essentially different. Vahabzadeh offers a conceptual phenomenology of the key thinkers and theorists of both revolutionary violence and various approaches to nonviolence. Arguing that violence is inseparable from civilizations, Violence and Nonviolence concludes by making a number of original conceptualizations regarding the relationship between violence and nonviolence, exploring the possibility of a nonviolent future and proposing to understand the relationship between the two concepts as concentric, not opposites.

This book offers a view of Iran through politics, history and literature, showing how the three angles combine. Iran, being a revolutionary society, experienced two great revolutions within the short span of just seventy years, from the 1900s to the 1970s. Both were massive revolts of the society against the state; the main objective of the first being to establish lawful government to make modernisation possible, and the second, to overthrow the absolute and arbitrary state, though this time mainly under the banner of religion and Marxism-Leninism and anti-Westernism. Neither of them succeeded in their lofty ideals for reasons that are explained and analysed within. The author also offers a detailed description of Iran’s short-term society, examining the political and intellectual lives of two of the most remarkable intellectuals-cum-politicians of the twentieth century. This book provides an overview of modern Persian literature, both poetry and prose, and discusses the works of three of the most remarkable Persian poets and writers of the period. It considers classical Persian literature through the great variety of its form and substance, and neo-classical literary developments in the nineteenth century, covering the whole history of Persian literature. This is crowned in the last chapter by the love poetry of one of the greatest Persian poets. Iran will be of interest to students and scholars of Iranian studies and Middle East Politics.

Offers a comprehensive study of Iranian modernist art since the 1950s, showing its role in shaping ideas around national identity and anti-colonialism.

Critical approaches to the study of topics related to Persian literature and Iranian culture have evolved in recent decades. The essays included in this volume collectively demonstrate the most recent creative approaches to the study of the Persian language, literature, and culture, and the way these methodologies have progressed academic debate. Topics covered include; culture, cognition, history, the social context of literary criticism, the problematics of literary modernity, and the issues of writing literary history. More specifically, authors explore the nuances of these topics; literature and life, poetry and nature, culture and literature, women and literature, freedom of literature, Persian language, power, and censorship, and issues related to translation and translating Persian literature in particular. In dealing with these seminal subjects, contributors acknowledge and contemplate the works of Ahmad Karimi Hakkak and other pioneering critics, analysing how these works have influenced the field of literary and cultural studies. Contributing a variety of theoretical and inter-disciplinary approaches to this field of study, this book is a valuable addition to the study of Persian poetry and prose, and to literary criticism more broadly.