The translations are not without their awkward moments, but when writing about those moments that transcend language,...
Tactile, thoughtful quatrains celebrating individual identity and experience, translated from Persian.
For most Western readers, Persian poetry might conjure few associations beyond Rumi or Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Perhaps aware of this, Safdarian (I Want to Follow the Sun, 2011) makes sure to honor his own indebtedness to his better-known forebears: “What I need from the universe: a nice time…yes, / a bit calm, and a friend with a flute, / that we may read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam / and drink together a little wine.” This vignette also serves as an invitation and instruction on how best to enjoy Safdarian’s poetry. Composed in the traditional Persian do-bayti couplet style and set with the original Persian facing Safdarian’s English translations, these 192 quatrains feel simultaneously foreign and familiar. There’s a touch of exoticism in Safdarian’s soft mysticism—“and I have to be beyond my body. / I have to be the power of thoughts from all varieties”—and in his references and cadences: “He was looking for you from Shiraz to Rasht / in alien roads and fields. / Although he could not find you during daylight, / he continued to look for you even at night.” His English translations can strike both the eye and ear as distinctly non-native, a problem he acknowledges: “A living person gave birth to a poem. / A translator killed the poem through translation.” Nevertheless, Safdarian’s primary mood is passion, and passion, it seems, does translate well. Though he writes about a myriad of subjects—war, poetry, racism, the importance of honoring the individual—this passion ensures that his romantic poems, of love gained and lost, are the best of the bunch. Even the unsure English that emerges can be read as an understandable loss of coherence by the stricken narrators. His take on loss is often powerfully direct and always felt in a deeply corporeal way. In “End,” the narrator, crying, laments the loss of a lover—“My eyes left me after you. / My heart stayed in my chest and decayed”—while in “The Time 2,” the narrator’s undoing is the appearance of the beloved: “I saw you; my heart unclenched, was lost.”
The translations are not without their awkward moments, but when writing about those moments that transcend language, Safdarian seems to find exactly the words he needs.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496990044
Page Count: 200
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.
Heidish (A Misplaced Woman, 2016, etc.) presents an account of St. Francis of Assisi’s life, as told from his father’s perspective in poetic form.
St. Francis is known as a saint who believed in living the Gospel, gave sermons to birds, and tamed a wolf. Over the course of 84 poems, Heidish tells her own fictionalized version of the saint’s journey. In his youth, Francesco is an apprentice of his father, Pietro Bernardone, a fabric importer. The boy is a sensitive dreamer and nature lover who sees “natural holiness in every living thing.” As an adult, Francesco decides to pursue knighthood, but God warns him to “Go back, child / Serve the master.” He joins the Church of San Damiano, steals his father’s storeroom stock, and sells it to rebuild the church. His furious father chains him in the cellar, and the bishop orders Francesco to repay the debt. Afterward, father and son stop speaking to each other; Francesco becomes a healer of the sick and a proficient preacher. After failing to broker a peace agreement during wartime, Francesco falls into depression and resigns his church position. He retreats to the mountains and eventually dies; it’s only then that Pietro becomes a true follower of St. Francis: “You are the father now and I the son / learning still what it means to be a saint,” he says. Heidish’s decision to tell this story from Pietro’s perspective is what makes this oft-told legend seem fresh again. She uses superb similes and metaphors; for example, at different points, she writes that St. Francis had eyes like “lit wicks” and a spirit that “shone like a clean copper pot.” In another instance, she describes the Church of San Damiano as a place in which “walls crumbled / like stale dry bread.” Following the poems, the author also offers a thorough and engaging historical summary of the real life of St. Francis, which only adds further context and depth to the tale.
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9905262-1-6
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Dolan & Associates
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.
A debut volume of poetry explores love and war.
Divided into four sections, Osaki’s book covers vast emotional territories. Section 1, entitled “Walking Back the Cat,” is a reflection on youthful relationships both familial and romantic. “Dying Arts,” the second part, is an examination of war and its brutal consequences. But sections three and four, named “Tradecraft” and “Best Evidence” respectively, do not appear to group poems by theme. The collection opens with “My Father Holding Squash,” one of Osaki’s strongest poems. It introduces the poet’s preoccupation with ephemera—particularly old photographs and letters. Here he describes a photo that is “several years old” of his father in his garden. Osaki muses that an invisible caption reads: “Look at this, you poetry-writing / jackass. Not everything I raise is useless!” The squash is described as “bearable fruit,” wryly hinting that the poet son is considered somewhat less bearable in his father’s eyes. Again, in the poem “Photograph,” Osaki is at his best, sensuously describing a shot of a young woman and the fleeting nature of that moment spent with her: “I know only that I was with her / in a room years ago, and that the sun filtering / into that room faded instantly upon striking the floor.” Wistful nostalgia gives way to violence in “Dying Arts.” Poems such as “Preserve” present a battleground dystopia: “Upturned graves and craters / to swim in when it rains. / Small children shake skulls / like rattles, while older ones carve rifles / out of bone.” Meanwhile, “Silver Star” considers the act of escorting the coffin of a dead soldier home, and “Gun Song” ruminates on owning a weapon to protect against home invasion. The language is more jagged here but powerfully unsettling nonetheless. The collection boasts a range of promising poetic voices, but they do not speak to one another, a common pitfall found in debuts. “Walking Back the Cat” is outstanding in its refined attention to detail; the sections following it read as though they have been produced by two or more other poets. Nevertheless, this is thoughtful, timely writing that demands further attention.
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984198-32-7
Page Count: 66
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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