Guest Editor: Sholeh Wolpe http://www.sholehwolpe.com
Download the poem in Persian in MS Word format: Ghonah
About the poet
Forough Farrokhzad is without a doubt one of the most significant Iranian poets of the twentieth century. She was born in 1935 to a middle-class family in Tehran, Iran. She married at seventeen and divorced within three years. In a society where women historically have few rights, she was forced to relinquish her only son to her husband and his family. She never remarried. Instead Farrokhzad turned to poetry and film and led an independent and at times impoverished life.
She was a poet of great audacity and extraordinary talent. Her poetry was the poetry of protest -- protest through revelation -- revelation of the innermost world of women (considered taboo until then), their intimate secrets and desires, their sorrows, longings, aspirations and at times even their articulation through silence. Her expressions of physical and emotional intimacy, much lacking in Persian women's poetry up to that point, placed her at the center of controversy, even among the intellectuals of the time. She was subjected to tabloid gossip and portrayed as a woman of loose morals. On February 14, 1967 she died in a car crash. She was 32 years old.
According the Iranian Scholar, Farzaneh Milani: "What sets (Farrokhzad) apart from her predecessors and even from her contemporary women writers is her rendering of quotidian experience with no intention to guide, to educate, to lead...(her) poetry is an accurate portrayal of the pain and pleasure of a whole generation undergoing radical change."
To this day, Farrokhzad is loved and revered by many Iranians, young and old, and her poems have inspired music, paintings and essays. There is a rhythm, a unique music, to Farrokhzad's poetry without which the poems may lose portions of their hypnotic effect. Therefore, in translating her work, I have done my utmost to capture this rhythm without compromising meaning or intention.
- Sholeh Wolpe
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