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Lean Against This Late Hour
A vivid, affecting portrait of life in the shadow of violence and loss, for readers of both English and Persian
The first selection of poems by renowned Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian to appear in English, this collection is a mesmerizing, disorienting descent into the trauma of loss and its aftermath. In spare lines, Abdolmalekian conjures surreal, cinematic images that pan wide as deftly as they narrow into intimate focus. Time is a thread come unspooled: pain arrives before the wound, and the dead wait for sunrise.
Abdolmalekian resists definitive separations between cause and effect, life and death, or heaven and hell, and challenges our sense of what is fixed and what is unsettled and permeable. Though the speakers in these poems are witnesses to the deforming effects of grief and memory, they remain alive to curiosity, to the pleasure of companionship, and to other ways of being and seeing. Lean Against This Late Hour illuminates the images we conjure in the face of abandonment and ruin, and finds them by turns frightening, bewildering, ethereal, and defiant. "This time," a disembodied voice commands, "send us a prophet who only listens."
The first selection of poems by renowned Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian to appear in English, this collection is a mesmerizing, disorienting descent into the trauma of loss and its aftermath. In spare lines, Abdolmalekian conjures surreal, cinematic images that pan wide as deftly as they narrow into intimate focus. Time is a thread come unspooled: pain arrives before the wound, and the dead wait for sunrise.
Abdolmalekian resists definitive separations between cause and effect, life and death, or heaven and hell, and challenges our sense of what is fixed and what is unsettled and permeable. Though the speakers in these poems are witnesses to the deforming effects of grief and memory, they remain alive to curiosity, to the pleasure of companionship, and to other ways of being and seeing. Lean Against This Late Hour illuminates the images we conjure in the face of abandonment and ruin, and finds them by turns frightening, bewildering, ethereal, and defiant. "This time," a disembodied voice commands, "send us a prophet who only listens."
160 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 2020
9 people are currently reading
651 people want to read
About the author
Garous Abdolmalekian
8 books23 followersIranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian is the author of six poetry collections: Lean Against this Late Hour (2020), Acceptance (2015), Hollows (2011), Lines Change Places in the Dark (2008), The Faded Colors of the World (2005), and The Hidden Bird (2002). He is a recipient of the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award (2003) and the winner of the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize (2006). Abdolmalekian poems have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Kurdish, and Spanish. He serves as editor of the poetry section at Cheshmeh Publications in Tehran.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
November 24, 2020
Strong, vibrant collection - read it, came back to it, read it again.
PATTERN IV
Staring at the tiny planet
God calculated again.
There was no space for a continuous forest
no space for an infinite sea
no matter how endless the search.
And so the invention of your eyes.
PATTERN IV
Staring at the tiny planet
God calculated again.
There was no space for a continuous forest
no space for an infinite sea
no matter how endless the search.
And so the invention of your eyes.
December 19, 2020
I am already waiting for the next collection to be translated...
Your dress waving in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.
*
Of the moon
all that’s left is a stain upon the window.
Of all the waters in the world
this lone drop on your cheek.
And the borders have painted over God’s landscapes for so long
that dried blood
is just a name for a color.
Tomorrow morning
humanity will enter the alley.
And the trees will hide
out of terror
behind the sparrows.
*
In me there are characters
who write their own poetry with my hands
who flip through stacks of bills with my hands
who make fists of my hands
who place my hands on the sofa edge
and while one sits down
the other stands up, leaves
*
How many times are we born
that we die
so many times?
*
I know
I am dead
and that
only you and I know,
you who no longer read the newspaper aloud.
You who no longer read at all
and the silence is so maddening
that I wish at times
to become an ant
to build a house in the throat of a flute
to ask the wind to blow the notes
to send them drifting into this window
or lift me out of the shadows on the flagstones,
to place me on your white shirt
where I know
you will shake me off again
within the lines of this poem
within these very days.
*
Under the overcast sky
the sunflower
thinks about the sense of its name
Your dress waving in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.
*
Of the moon
all that’s left is a stain upon the window.
Of all the waters in the world
this lone drop on your cheek.
And the borders have painted over God’s landscapes for so long
that dried blood
is just a name for a color.
Tomorrow morning
humanity will enter the alley.
And the trees will hide
out of terror
behind the sparrows.
*
In me there are characters
who write their own poetry with my hands
who flip through stacks of bills with my hands
who make fists of my hands
who place my hands on the sofa edge
and while one sits down
the other stands up, leaves
*
How many times are we born
that we die
so many times?
*
I know
I am dead
and that
only you and I know,
you who no longer read the newspaper aloud.
You who no longer read at all
and the silence is so maddening
that I wish at times
to become an ant
to build a house in the throat of a flute
to ask the wind to blow the notes
to send them drifting into this window
or lift me out of the shadows on the flagstones,
to place me on your white shirt
where I know
you will shake me off again
within the lines of this poem
within these very days.
*
Under the overcast sky
the sunflower
thinks about the sense of its name
Read
December 19, 2020Here's a poem using a word's double meaning nicely in this collection:
Dark Period
In this line
or the next one
there will be a period,
an end to all the words.
Within the stark frame of the window,
tired silhouettes
and the dark dress
of a little girl growing distant
growing distant
growing distant
In the stark frame of the window
a dark period
grows distant.
A period
that is the end to all the words.
Abdolmalekian is well known in his home country of Iran and has garnered high praise from (looking at the blurbs) Kaveh Akbar, Ilya Kaminsky, and Solmaz Sharif, all poets familiar to American readers. While I enjoyed these stark, minimalist poems, I can't say my praise has enough runway to reach these esteemed poets' heights. Still, I'm glad I read the collection.
Dark Period
In this line
or the next one
there will be a period,
an end to all the words.
Within the stark frame of the window,
tired silhouettes
and the dark dress
of a little girl growing distant
growing distant
growing distant
In the stark frame of the window
a dark period
grows distant.
A period
that is the end to all the words.
Abdolmalekian is well known in his home country of Iran and has garnered high praise from (looking at the blurbs) Kaveh Akbar, Ilya Kaminsky, and Solmaz Sharif, all poets familiar to American readers. While I enjoyed these stark, minimalist poems, I can't say my praise has enough runway to reach these esteemed poets' heights. Still, I'm glad I read the collection.
July 10, 2020
One of the best books I've read in a long time, Lean Against This Late Hour reminded me at times of some of my old favorite poets like Yehuda Amichai and Vasko Popa, in its accessibility, its burning lucidity, its skeletal concision, its youthful passion, its overflowing emotion, its intelligence, its originality, its necessariness and its timeless relevance in how it confronts the fallout of war. The metaphors are at once down-to-earth and exhilaratingly otherworldly, metaphors like:
the oranges of life are blood oranges
and
perhaps a day
in my seventies I'll be born
and feel that death
is a shirt we all come to put on,
whose buttons we can either fasten
or leave undone...
I like how Abdolmalekian goes that extra step to make his metaphors feel not like fleeting verbal constructions, but something really concrete and tangible, something that can be later stepped on and built on:
the curved posture of my father
who after years
has yet to take my brother's corpse
off his shoulders
and place him in the ground
You can sense the poet's deep intelligence in the nuanced way he writes about the subtly varied interactions that can occur between light and dark, for example:
We stepped into a room,
lit the candles
but nothing in the room was lit.
The glow conceals the unlit...
and, in a later poem,
The sun won't conform to the dark
His intelligence also shines through in the simultaneous complexity and clarity of some of his truly unique metaphors:
In me there are characters
who melt in the snow
who drift with the rivers
and years later
rain into me
In one poem he names Lorca as an inspiration, a predecessor, and you're like of course:
I think the bullet shot toward you
was a glass of water
poured on a forest in flames
My favorite poems were "Pattern," "Long Poem of Loneliness" (one of the best poems I've ever read about a father), "Doubts and a Hesitation," "Poem for Stillness" (about a soldier's PTSD), "Necklace," "Long Exposure," "Paper Boat" (a contender for the best poem ever to use Noah's Ark as a metaphor), "On Power Lines," "Forest," "Long Exposure VI," and "Bricks."
the oranges of life are blood oranges
and
perhaps a day
in my seventies I'll be born
and feel that death
is a shirt we all come to put on,
whose buttons we can either fasten
or leave undone...
I like how Abdolmalekian goes that extra step to make his metaphors feel not like fleeting verbal constructions, but something really concrete and tangible, something that can be later stepped on and built on:
the curved posture of my father
who after years
has yet to take my brother's corpse
off his shoulders
and place him in the ground
You can sense the poet's deep intelligence in the nuanced way he writes about the subtly varied interactions that can occur between light and dark, for example:
We stepped into a room,
lit the candles
but nothing in the room was lit.
The glow conceals the unlit...
and, in a later poem,
The sun won't conform to the dark
His intelligence also shines through in the simultaneous complexity and clarity of some of his truly unique metaphors:
In me there are characters
who melt in the snow
who drift with the rivers
and years later
rain into me
In one poem he names Lorca as an inspiration, a predecessor, and you're like of course:
I think the bullet shot toward you
was a glass of water
poured on a forest in flames
My favorite poems were "Pattern," "Long Poem of Loneliness" (one of the best poems I've ever read about a father), "Doubts and a Hesitation," "Poem for Stillness" (about a soldier's PTSD), "Necklace," "Long Exposure," "Paper Boat" (a contender for the best poem ever to use Noah's Ark as a metaphor), "On Power Lines," "Forest," "Long Exposure VI," and "Bricks."
April 18, 2020
I knew from the first poem, Border, that I would read the collection in one sitting, just like I had done with Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic.
Border
I am in repose
as my wife reads a poem about war
The last thing I need
is for the tanks to advance into my bed
[…]
I was a kid
my mother washed the dishes
and my father returned home with his black mustache
When the bombs poured forth
all three of us were children . . .
Right after, Abdolmalekian gifts us his short beautiful of the collection, Pattern, and the reader knows that Abdolmalekian is going to take us in a Benigni-like Life Is Beautiful hour, even at its darkest hour.
Pattern
Your dress waving in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.
Pattern and Long Exposure are the two main branches the author jumps back from and forth to, each blooming with beautiful seven flowers, turning the others into background leaves in this wonderful poetic frame.
I posted a thread of highlights in Twitter when I finished the book last night as impressions were fresh, right out of the reading oven.
https://twitter.com/exlibrisetc/statu...
I revisited the thread this morning (easier than jumping form one highlight to the next in the Kindle App) and only then I thought that had it not been for Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey, I would have not been able to enjoy this beautiful poetry collection in English.
Beautiful collection. Melancholic at times, but continually appealing to both thought and emotion. I’ll leave you with one my favorites from the book.
What Bridge
What bridge
somewhere in the world
has collapsed
so that no one gets home?
Border
I am in repose
as my wife reads a poem about war
The last thing I need
is for the tanks to advance into my bed
[…]
I was a kid
my mother washed the dishes
and my father returned home with his black mustache
When the bombs poured forth
all three of us were children . . .
Right after, Abdolmalekian gifts us his short beautiful of the collection, Pattern, and the reader knows that Abdolmalekian is going to take us in a Benigni-like Life Is Beautiful hour, even at its darkest hour.
Pattern
Your dress waving in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.
Pattern and Long Exposure are the two main branches the author jumps back from and forth to, each blooming with beautiful seven flowers, turning the others into background leaves in this wonderful poetic frame.
I posted a thread of highlights in Twitter when I finished the book last night as impressions were fresh, right out of the reading oven.
https://twitter.com/exlibrisetc/statu...
I revisited the thread this morning (easier than jumping form one highlight to the next in the Kindle App) and only then I thought that had it not been for Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey, I would have not been able to enjoy this beautiful poetry collection in English.
Beautiful collection. Melancholic at times, but continually appealing to both thought and emotion. I’ll leave you with one my favorites from the book.
What Bridge
What bridge
somewhere in the world
has collapsed
so that no one gets home?
February 21, 2020
Poem for Stillness
He stirs his tea with a gun barrel
He solves the puzzle with a gun barrel
He scratches his thoughts with a gun barrel
And sometimes
he sits facing himself
and pulls bullet-memories
out of his brain
He's fought in many wars
but is no match for his own despair
These white pills
have left him so colorless
his shadow must stand up
to fetch him water
We ought to accept
that no soldier
has ever returned
from war
alive (21)
He stirs his tea with a gun barrel
He solves the puzzle with a gun barrel
He scratches his thoughts with a gun barrel
And sometimes
he sits facing himself
and pulls bullet-memories
out of his brain
He's fought in many wars
but is no match for his own despair
These white pills
have left him so colorless
his shadow must stand up
to fetch him water
We ought to accept
that no soldier
has ever returned
from war
alive (21)
October 19, 2020
"So are all the winds gone?
Has this tree been condemned to an eternal yellow?
And did the dandelions wither so long
where the walls meet in the corner
that they’ve forgotten their news?
—You pound the windowpanes of this train to no avail.
In vain you hurl your voice to the other side of the window.
We are the actors in a silent film."
Wish I could read this collection in Persian, and appreciate it in all its glory
Has this tree been condemned to an eternal yellow?
And did the dandelions wither so long
where the walls meet in the corner
that they’ve forgotten their news?
—You pound the windowpanes of this train to no avail.
In vain you hurl your voice to the other side of the window.
We are the actors in a silent film."
Wish I could read this collection in Persian, and appreciate it in all its glory
February 17, 2021
I can’t love this surreptitiously, I just want to shout. This is one of the most deep, powerful poetry’s I had read recently. A magnificent collection to live with. This one will be definitely one of the best ever this year. Highly recommend it.
March 28, 2020
5+ out of 5.
Absolutely ravishing. Abdolmalekian, as translated by geniuses Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey, is an astounding chronicler of life in war, of life at all. There's humor, a mischief even at times, but also such beauty and pathos and pain and honesty. Good lord, I loved this; so many of these poems took my breath away.
The poems are presented with the original Arabic on the left, which adds a beautiful level of understanding about each of them -- something I hope Penguin Poets will do more often with their translations!
Absolutely ravishing. Abdolmalekian, as translated by geniuses Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey, is an astounding chronicler of life in war, of life at all. There's humor, a mischief even at times, but also such beauty and pathos and pain and honesty. Good lord, I loved this; so many of these poems took my breath away.
The poems are presented with the original Arabic on the left, which adds a beautiful level of understanding about each of them -- something I hope Penguin Poets will do more often with their translations!
October 30, 2019
Lean Against This Late Hour by Garous Abdolmalekian is divine. I am literally trying to come up with a word that might precisely explain the way I'm feeling right now, after reading this book. I've read thousands of books but this one is out of this world. Each and every poem is a master piece. If the poems are so beautiful after being translated to English, I can only imagine how wonderful they would be like in the originally written Persian language. Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh did a great job with the translation. I completed reading this book in just an hour and I re-read immediately. I cried after I finished reading the poems.
The author has described the current world where we are residing in an excellent way. Anyone who reads these poems will be a transformed person. I feel like I was reborn after reading them. I really am not allowed to say more but my heart is so full right now. I am in love with the poet.
I feel honored to be able to read this book. Thank you so much Penguin Books for sharing the Advance Reviewers Copy with me. The book is going to be published in April, 2020. I suggest every single human being to read this book without any age limit.
The author has described the current world where we are residing in an excellent way. Anyone who reads these poems will be a transformed person. I feel like I was reborn after reading them. I really am not allowed to say more but my heart is so full right now. I am in love with the poet.
I feel honored to be able to read this book. Thank you so much Penguin Books for sharing the Advance Reviewers Copy with me. The book is going to be published in April, 2020. I suggest every single human being to read this book without any age limit.
April 21, 2021
Reading poems translated from my first language in English felt nice actually! I’d read the poems in Farsi before, but it hit different in English. I liked the translation. It was well done and precise.
September 26, 2020
Your dress waving in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.
April 13, 2020
Moving, fascinating poems. This is a poet who has lost too much to war to ever want to see it again. Images of bullets, missed connections, stopped machinery, choppy seas, and brothers abound, and the overall feeling is of death and loss. Powerful, and not what I expected from an Iranian poet (although on consideration I'm not sure what I expected).
The publisher has also put the Farsi text before the English, and while I didn't get a whole lot out of that it was still interesting to see the way the structure of the poems looked different in different languages.
**Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy in exchange for a review.
The publisher has also put the Farsi text before the English, and while I didn't get a whole lot out of that it was still interesting to see the way the structure of the poems looked different in different languages.
**Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy in exchange for a review.
July 26, 2021
Necklace
Of the moon
all that’s left is a stain upon the window.
Of all the waters in the world
this lone drop on your cheek.
And the borders have painted over God’s landscapes for so long
that dried blood
is just a name for a color.
Tomorrow morning
humanity will enter the alley.
And the trees will hide
out of terror
behind the sparrows
Of the moon
all that’s left is a stain upon the window.
Of all the waters in the world
this lone drop on your cheek.
And the borders have painted over God’s landscapes for so long
that dried blood
is just a name for a color.
Tomorrow morning
humanity will enter the alley.
And the trees will hide
out of terror
behind the sparrows
January 8, 2022
holy shit
August 6, 2022
Loved this.
August 31, 2023
“We aimed at our targets but war shed its bullets in the dark, now and then you shoot your enemy, now and then your daughter.”
July 11, 2024
I was confused thru this whole set.
July 7, 2020
holy.
shit.
The set is genuinely phenomenal. The prose, full of juxtapositions and inconsistencies, is at once sensual and very thought stimulating. One of the best poetry books I've read this year.
shit.
The set is genuinely phenomenal. The prose, full of juxtapositions and inconsistencies, is at once sensual and very thought stimulating. One of the best poetry books I've read this year.
September 16, 2025
"even after letting go
of the last bird
I hesitate
there is something
in this empty cage
that never gets released"
of the last bird
I hesitate
there is something
in this empty cage
that never gets released"
July 13, 2024
Exquisite.
October 22, 2020
This collection is absolutely gorgeous. The poetry is at once sensuous and very thought provoking, full of juxtapositions and contradictions. There is an air of melancholy with little hints of beauty throughout. I love the way the poet compares and contrasts the natural world to the man-made one in a lot of ways, from bees flying over fields of landmines, to birds so accustomed to nesting on wires, that they no longer nest on trees. The poems contain a hint of the complexities of self and identity, and the way we relate to others, yet remain apart. The martial imagery is also very well-used and affecting, without being too much.
This collection also has a very unusual sense of time, where memory is stacked on top of memory on top of present reality, where multiple possibilities inhabit a single space. It's breathtaking and brilliant.
I'd recommend this to anyone who loves imagery rich poetry that appeals to the senses, the mind, and the heart.
FTC disclosure: I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
This collection also has a very unusual sense of time, where memory is stacked on top of memory on top of present reality, where multiple possibilities inhabit a single space. It's breathtaking and brilliant.
I'd recommend this to anyone who loves imagery rich poetry that appeals to the senses, the mind, and the heart.
FTC disclosure: I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
August 10, 2023
“Under the overcast sky
the sunflower
thinks about the sense of it’s name”
like OHHHH MY GOD
genius amazing talented and my god this man is so lonely but he knows how to write about it!!!! 10/10 i love
April 9, 2021
Some real stunners in here
July 15, 2021
Haunting, disembodied, and strange. The effect is real and I'm glad for the introduction giving the reader frame of reference and notes about the translation.
August 10, 2022
“I have prepared the trunk of my body / for the possibility of your kindness.”
January 13, 2024
Just gorgeous! The first poem I read, I fell in love with and had to read the rest:
_________________________
Meeting
The rain hovering over the city for days
finally fell.
You
were arriving after ten years…
I was in the dark
about your hair color
about passion, sorrow, fury
and about all else I had prepared in the drawers.
In the dark
about the candles on the table…
Repeatedly you and I
had forgotten about time in cafes and in the streets
And now time
Is taking its revenge on us.
You knocked on the door,
I answered.
You greeted me
but had no voice,
gave me a hug
but I saw your shadow
with its hands kept in its pockets.
We stepped into the room
lit the candles
but nothing in the room was lit.
The glow conceals the unlit…
While you collapsed on the sofa
sank into it
shivered on it
sweated
I wrote,
surreptitiously,
on my calendar’s margins:
A whale dying in agony on the beach
Is not there to meet anyone.
__________________
Abdolmalekian’s poems are filled with grief, love, war, trying to make sense of seemingly insignificant moments of life, harvesting beauty, amidst pervasive trauma. His lines are unsettling at times but oddly comforting, hopeful, joyful. His masterful use of personification creates new space and meaning for the human body. This collection is simultaneously tender and violent, dark and illuminating.
Some golden lines:
“Within me
come the cries of a tree
tired of repeating the same fruit.”
“I can feel
how the person who isn’t
overwhelms
the person who is”
“How many times are we born
that we die
so many times?”
“Closed eyes open wider
and the eyelid is a curtain
extending the landscape.”
“Tell me how to manage my smile
when they have planted land mines all around my lips.”
“I have prepared the trunk of my body
for the possibility of your kindness.”
“This cluttered table
is the corpse of the party.”
Enjoy!
_________________________
Meeting
The rain hovering over the city for days
finally fell.
You
were arriving after ten years…
I was in the dark
about your hair color
about passion, sorrow, fury
and about all else I had prepared in the drawers.
In the dark
about the candles on the table…
Repeatedly you and I
had forgotten about time in cafes and in the streets
And now time
Is taking its revenge on us.
You knocked on the door,
I answered.
You greeted me
but had no voice,
gave me a hug
but I saw your shadow
with its hands kept in its pockets.
We stepped into the room
lit the candles
but nothing in the room was lit.
The glow conceals the unlit…
While you collapsed on the sofa
sank into it
shivered on it
sweated
I wrote,
surreptitiously,
on my calendar’s margins:
A whale dying in agony on the beach
Is not there to meet anyone.
__________________
Abdolmalekian’s poems are filled with grief, love, war, trying to make sense of seemingly insignificant moments of life, harvesting beauty, amidst pervasive trauma. His lines are unsettling at times but oddly comforting, hopeful, joyful. His masterful use of personification creates new space and meaning for the human body. This collection is simultaneously tender and violent, dark and illuminating.
Some golden lines:
“Within me
come the cries of a tree
tired of repeating the same fruit.”
“I can feel
how the person who isn’t
overwhelms
the person who is”
“How many times are we born
that we die
so many times?”
“Closed eyes open wider
and the eyelid is a curtain
extending the landscape.”
“Tell me how to manage my smile
when they have planted land mines all around my lips.”
“I have prepared the trunk of my body
for the possibility of your kindness.”
“This cluttered table
is the corpse of the party.”
Enjoy!
September 1, 2024
Garrous Abdolmalekian has the coveted (and lucrative!) skill of writing poetry that works well when translated into any language. This is undeniable, and becomes even more impressive in light of the poor translation (see below).
His imagery does not always land, but when it does it lands with a bang! There are many truly excellent lines, as well as some (though fewer) excellent poems in general. I like that his poems are concise, ranging from a handful of lines to about a page and a half. He does best when he gets philosophical. Many of the sentiments stayed with me a long time.
Regarding the translations, however, I cannot speak well. Many times I'd read the original Persian and wonder, why did they choose to translate it like that? Many opportunities are missed to take the beauty of the original and reflect it into English, but the translations often ended up dull at best and non-sensical at worst.
Relatedly, I'm glad that the bilingual version exists and that I got a chance to peruse both versions of each poem.
Stuff that I didn't like about Abdolmalekian's poetry was: a) pretty much anything hinting at male vs female characters - we have a classic case of badly written women syndrome, which is a real shame for a millennial writer who should really know better; b) there is a lot of self referential stuff about writing poetry and being a poet, which is just a personal pet peeve that I find lazy and boring. I think it's really hard to get "meta" right, and in this case it gets over used and not particularly cleverly either.
Overall, worth it for the gems!
His imagery does not always land, but when it does it lands with a bang! There are many truly excellent lines, as well as some (though fewer) excellent poems in general. I like that his poems are concise, ranging from a handful of lines to about a page and a half. He does best when he gets philosophical. Many of the sentiments stayed with me a long time.
Regarding the translations, however, I cannot speak well. Many times I'd read the original Persian and wonder, why did they choose to translate it like that? Many opportunities are missed to take the beauty of the original and reflect it into English, but the translations often ended up dull at best and non-sensical at worst.
Relatedly, I'm glad that the bilingual version exists and that I got a chance to peruse both versions of each poem.
Stuff that I didn't like about Abdolmalekian's poetry was: a) pretty much anything hinting at male vs female characters - we have a classic case of badly written women syndrome, which is a real shame for a millennial writer who should really know better; b) there is a lot of self referential stuff about writing poetry and being a poet, which is just a personal pet peeve that I find lazy and boring. I think it's really hard to get "meta" right, and in this case it gets over used and not particularly cleverly either.
Overall, worth it for the gems!
December 28, 2023
I read this collection all the way through, then immediately restarted and listened to it again. Brief but immensely powerful. The translators’ introduction was a fascinating insight into capturing the nuances and dimensions of the original Persian in English, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for their careful work. I would love to read more in translation from this gifted and important voice in poetry.
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