Sin

Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad - Forugh Farrokhzad [translated by Sholeh Wolpe]
The University of Arkansas Press - 2007
134 pages

       So, let's talk about poetry.  It's honestly not my favorite to read.  Quite often when I'd try to read poems in school I'd not really get what the author was talking about until the professor or teacher explained it to me or, at least, started to explain it.  Granted, there are poems I love, like say Carl Sagan's Chicago or maybe some that I read long ago by Sharon Olds or John Donne, but usually poems don't stay with me very long after I read them.  This is another of those exceptions.

       I came upon a Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad on accident.  I was reading a report of someone's blog, a women who believed she may die the next day.  In her way of coming to terms with this, she explained that she had looked the photos she had of friends and family and mentally said goodbye to them, just in case.  Then, she read some favorite poetry and one of the poets she read was Forugh Farrokhzad.  Knowing nothing about Farrokhzad, I figured that if someone, believing they may shortly die, thought it was a good thing to read her poetry, then maybe I should look into it.

       Not really knowing what to expect, this collection of Farrokhzad's poetry was really quite surprising.  When I got to the poem where she compared a wedding ring to an instrument of slavery, I quickly realize this is what would probably be considered a feminist work and I enjoyed the collection completely, even though I figured I didn't get each and every allusion.  Helpfully, the book has a small section in the back to help with this, giving the closest English equivalent for the Farsi phrases. 

       Sin also contains a brief biography of the poet, which I found really helpful in putting her work in context, myself having but a limited history of Iran.  This is poetry written well before the 1979 Revolution as the poet herself died in 1967.  Possibly the most striking early bit was the translator's own short forward where she describes that an elderly relative asked the translator "why are you wasting time on that whore?" showing that even today, decades after her death, Farrokhzad remains controversial.

       I really enjoyed this collection and I'm happy that a quirk of fate or happenstance let me know about Farrokhzad's work.  From a quick search online, this seems to be one of the few (if maybe only) readily avaliable books in the English about Farrokhzad.  If you like poetry, I'd definitely give it a try...even if you don't like poetry...I'd still give it a try.  If you like feminist literature, you'd probably wouldn't regret giving it a look as well.  It's well worth the hunt to find a copy. 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.