{"id":298036,"date":"2014-05-16T17:01:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T17:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/05\/16\/latest-review-the-oasis-of-now-selected-poems-by-sohrab-sepehri\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:09:38","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:09:38","slug":"latest-review-the-oasis-of-now-selected-poems-by-sohrab-sepehri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/05\/16\/latest-review-the-oasis-of-now-selected-poems-by-sohrab-sepehri\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: "The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems" by Sohrab Sepehri"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest addition<\/a> to our Reviews<\/a> section is by Heath Mayhew on The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems<\/em> by Sohrab Sepehri, translated by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, published by BOA<\/span> Editions.<\/p>\n

Heath is not only a loyal Open Letter subscriber, but has also previously reviewed<\/a> for Three Percent. And to tote Open Letter things a bit more, one of the translators of this beautiful collection of poetry is Kazim Ali, who was one of the translators of Marguerite Duras’s L’amour<\/em>,<\/a> which Open Letter published last year. Also, BOA<\/span> Editions is another local Rochester, NY publisher, and operated by great people. So this is really like one big group hug\u2014that you’re all welcome to join!<\/p>\n

Here’s the beginning of Heath’s review:<\/p>\n

\n

I have wanted to read Persian poetry ever since having heard so many good things about it from my Palestinian friend. Sohrab Sepehri\u2019s collection, The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems<\/em>, however, sounded quite new-agey\u2014as if the poetry was canned lyricism awash in love, peace, and overly sensual descriptions of nature\u2014and this worried me. I feared that Sepehri\u2019s poetry would surely turn me off to anything Persian for a long time. Even when I started to read the first lines of the opening poem, \u201cWater\u2019s Footfall\u201d (the title already felt like a distasteful personification), I felt depressed to have been selected to read the book. Very quickly, however, I began to shed my misgivings.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

While Sepehri is not especially well known in the West, he is one of the five most popular Persian poets of the modern Persian poetry movement known as \u201cNew Poetry\u201d (the other four being Nima Yushij, who is considered the father of modern Persian poetry, Ahmad Shamloo, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Forough Farrokhzad; \u201cNew Poetry\u201d is most notably characterized as having no meter or rhyme, which is a break from traditional Persian poetry). Sepehri was not even particularly popular in his own time\u2014this has, however, changed since then. Philosopher Soursh Dabbagh explains, \u201cInclinations towards more abstract thoughts subjected him to criticism by his contemporary literary critics such as Shamloo, [Rezi] Barahani, and [Dariush] Ashoori.\u201d Recently, Sepehri has become an emblem of justice and peace. During the 2009 Iranian election protests, the closing lines of his poem, and title of this collection, \u201cThe Oasis of Now\u201d, were used on signs and banners and stitched into people\u2019s clothing. They read, \u201cIf you look for me, \/ come soft and quietly, lest you crack the glass heart \/ that cups my loneliness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For the rest of the review, go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest addition to our Reviews section is by Heath Mayhew on The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems by Sohrab Sepehri, translated by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, published by BOA Editions. Heath is not only a loyal Open Letter subscriber, but has also previously reviewed for Three Percent. And to tote Open Letter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[15416,36596,52306,56046,56336,1646,56316,56326],"class_list":["post-298036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-boa-editions","tag-heath-mayhew","tag-kazim-ali","tag-mohammad-jafar-mahallati","tag-persian-poetry","tag-review","tag-sohrab-sepehri","tag-the-oasis-of-now-selected-poems"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309896,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298036\/revisions\/309896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}