Ali Abdolrezaei

Meine Träume umarmen dich nicht mehr
Du bist gegangen und in deiner Abwesenheit viele
Verliebte, Einsame und zuletzt
nur Sekunden Gäste in diesem Raum waren
So viele Freunde, so viele Hände…
Wie kommt es, dass ich mich nicht wieder verliebe?
Nun verweile in Gestern!
Keine Hand wird auf dein Gesicht Freude malen
Das Meer verschluckte sogar die Geduld, die uns  zu bleiben verhalf.
Und diese Augen meine Liebe, die werden nicht Weinen bedeuten
Deine Enthaltsamkeit….die kenne ich auch
Nun besitze ich  kein Wasser, um mit deinem Feuer mich zu versöhnen…
Bin kein Narr, um auf dieser Insel voller Zweifel…
und zwischen allen diesen Gästen….
eine Nacht du mich  wieder passieren könntest
Wäre das so, würdest du morgen sagen:
Gestern ist er gegangen….
Heute ist zu Ende, Was machst du morgen?
Wiederholen?
Gratuliere!
Denn ich gehe und zufrieden von meiner Flucht,
du solltest vergnügt sein….

Was willst du?
Den, der in mir pocht?
Den Mann, der das Meer in seiner Tasche steckt und selbst Feuer faengt?
Das Meer ist unvollendet
Weine du den Rest…
Noch verreise ich Bandare- Abbas der Augen, von denen  ich träumte
Das Bett, das deine Erinnerung in seiner Decke ruht, bin ich selbst
Ich habe Gott im Himmel verloren.
Einsamer bin ich als den Mond
Kann den Granatapfelbusch in meinem mageren Korb tragen

Das Rauchen lassen ich auch  wenn es von dir ziehe
Nun bist du weg, und wirst nie wissen,
Der Frühling ist in meiner Tasche zu Herbst geworden
Wofür zwei Milliarden Planeten da oben?
Nun bist du weg
Wie ein Stein, der nicht weiß, dass er ein Stein ist…
Soll ich leben?

Das Leben war meine Schwäche
Unter meinen Füssen starb die Erde
Was war ich?
Außer des Zufalls zwischen zwei Zigaretten
Außer des Propheten, der sein Kind opfert…
Was war ich?

Wer von der Hand ging,
hat die Augen gesehen, die über das Weinen Tränen goss
Und die Augen, die im Spiegel zuhause waren,
haben meiner Jugend verneint
Warum hat mich der Regen hier her geholt?
Damit ich begreife, es existiert eine Erde?
Nichts ist hier, außer einem grauen Haus

Der Mann, der den Tag in deinen Augen verlängert hatte…
Der Mann mit dem weinenden Penny in seiner Tasche
Die Hand, die den Mond stahl wie einer  weiße Fleck aus dem Schlafgewand Gottes
Gedemütigt passierte die Gassen von Ruscht
Verschwinde! schrie die Frau mit der dubiosen Geburt
Verschwinde! Manchmal die Toren des Süden
Verschwinde! schreien auch die Nutten.
Ich bleibe aber

Getrunken habe ich, um bleiben zu können in Iran
Das Herz schlägt für dich ein Leben lang
Am schwarzen Ufer meines Herzen Bandari solltest du tanzen!
Das kaspische Meer trank von deinen Augen und wurde zum Ocean
Und ich in deinen Händen die Ufern der Meere
Deine Liebe hält mich vom Beten fern
Muss daran denken,
wenn ich wieder in Delhi bin,
weinen sollte ich wieder.

The hyper reality of the “Sausage”  - By: Mansor Pooyan  

Let’s read the poem first before any analyses: 

Sausage 

Her hands that were in the photograph              I held with both hands 

When she got up she didn’t say thank you 

May I walk with you?  

Didn’t say no 

I hold her handswe walk a picture 

The one they hid in your eyesthe more I look        the less I findby the way    aren’t you wed? 

didn’t say 

won’t you? 

Didn’t say no! 

We wed! 

Days were passing as the windand nights were no longer than secondswe       were two lonely photosthat the world wanted to expel from the albumExpelled!       Don’t believe it?!Tonight when we’re sleeping obverse in another photopay that album a visitopen the frig door in that shot       and help yourselfto whatever 

sorry!             we only got sausage! 

By Ali Abdolrezaei  

As we read the poem, we can imagine the plot unfolding before our very eyes. The reader can easily create the scenes in their mind. If you read with performance in mind, you are more likely to appreciate the poet’s intentions and skills.Throughout the poem, the main character speaks his thoughts to the reader in a soliloquy and that in turn colours our perception of the narrative. The information disseminated, while intriguing sympathy, enables us to create a unified perception of the case. Towards the end, we are left to think about the social context of the poem and about how it fits into the literary tradition.The narrative is in verse with strong sound-pattern rhythms of the words. The first two syllables “Her hands” is stressed and gives a heavy significance to the opening. The syntax of the first line, ambiguously, connotates love at first sight with whom the protagonist had once encountered in a picture. The assertion “both hands” at the end of the first line focuses our imagination on the support provided by the protagonist to the beloved at a time of difficulty: “When she got up she didn’t say thank you”The numerous uses of the singular syllable “hands” create a unified impression of intimacy between the two characters. At the peak of such implication, all of a sudden we realise that the story is occurring in the virtual space of an album:“We were two lonely photos”With such a shift in realisation, comes the idea about the nature of mediation and the subjectivity of the human agency as the source upon which relationships in modern societies arise. The poem challenges the rational subject of its privileged access to truth.The poem implicitly questions the validity of objectivity as to whether any reality there exists outside of our own minds. The protagonist’s perceptions of events and relations are figments of his imagination in that he is the originator of his own perceived reality:“Don’t believe it?!”The events throughout the poem are presented in a chronological order and propagate a notion that the two characters were actually living together up to the flashpoint of the death:“We wed…Tonight…we’re sleeping obverse in another photo”But such account may not be the case: the physical relationship did not occur. Reality or delusion, this is the question the poem is concerned with. In the final episode, the protagonist shows off his contentment by saying that he and his beloved partner as two lonely pictures ran their scheduled showdown. We learn from the last snapshot that the deceased protagonist was lying this time round obverse in a photo. To the confused reader, the sausage appearing in one of the pictures of the album is offered as a means for celebration of life of the passed away regardless of actual or virtual death:“Open the frig door in that shot    and help yourself”The sausage as the only edible item in the fridge may idiosyncratically be assumed in existence:“Sorry we only got sausage!”The protagonist creates an imagined reality within which a relationship with his invented persona, originating from a photograph, takes effect. However, his life in virtual reality might be considered by materialists and objectivists alike as delusional. But as a matter of fact, we each create our own personal reality. This paradigm may be related to the Buddhist concept of emptiness or Shunyata. The poem raises a profound philosophical question “What is real?”. It contemplates on the idea of there being different realities for different people. The poem gives a practical answer: when people think something is true, it takes on a life of its own.As for the present age, the simulated copy has superseded the original. That is to say, the real object has been effaced by the signs of its existence. The notion of reality has been complicated by the profusion of its images. So, one may conclude that the reality no longer exists. In the case portrayed in the poem, one may opt for a denial of the physical occurrence of any event.The meaning and the cadence of the text offers a challenging perspective on the human condition. Baudrillard called this phenomenon as one of “hyper reality”.Hyper reality is significant as a paradigm to explain the inability of consciousness to distinguish between reality and fantasy, especially in high technological societies.    Here the reader is made aware of the nature of human life rather than just pure concern with the aesthetic in a poem. Although the aesthetic reaches readers on the surface level, but its intellectuality goes further onto a revelation level. That’s where its substance lies. 

October 2007          

Ali Abdolrezaei was born in northern Iran in 1969. Aside from being a poet, he is also trained as a mechanical engineer. In 2003 he had to flee Iran due to the serious scrutiny and censorship of his work. He has lived in London ever since. He has published 10 books of poetry, and has three forthcoming.

About the poetry of Ali Abdolrezaei

Ali Abdolrezaei is one of the most acclaimed poets of post Revolutionary Iran. His poems exert great influence on many younger poets. He managed to get published seven volumes of his work inside Iran. His last volume of poems, published on the internet, makes a poetic as well as a literary watershed.
Certainly poetry is essentially a private art form. Ali’s description of human hardship and suffering are not those of a man who can look at misery from a distance. The poets of his generation have an altogether sharper and more painful view of the suffering caused by a totalitarian regime seizing power in the wake of the 1979 Revolution. Among the poets of this time, there exists a sense of hopelessness in the face of world/ national events which they feel powerless to change or influence.
 Ali represents a group of poets who turned away from the legacy of Modern Persian poetry. They have relinquished the idea that the aim of poetry should be to express high emotion and the deepest feelings and forces of nature. Their subjects tend to be smaller and their language more colloquial with a sense that reality is also interwoven into the text.
Ali Abdolrezaei’s voice as a poet is clear and unmistakable; his style and subjects are completely his own. Ironically enough, his strongest poems are often those which describe personal experiences rather than world events. He sees changes in the forms and subjects of literature as a way of helping political and social change. This aspiration to change is reflected in the language of his poetry as well as the events it describes.
Early on in his career as a poet, Ali embarked upon a journey to find a language which could form the structure of his work. His language has great life and energy; it does not look back to the archaically traditions of poetry/ writing. He gives the feeling that language has been forced into new forms to communicate new experiences.
Further more, Ali does not use traditional forms of rhyme and rhythm. His own style depends on the counting of syllables and the sound-patters of the words, in a way which reflects the patterns of Old Persian poetry. Ali avoids adhering to great themes and grand language. His lengthy poems, in particular, are highly complex and often bring together a group of characters different in kind and time.
A guide is required to travel into his novel terrain which has all the semblance of the old, and yet is new. It is precisely this novelty clothed in the familiar that puzzles but also reinforces the reader’s desire to explore further into the twilight zone. There are buried layer upon layer of literary metaphors in his poetry. Ali’s protagonists are engaged with daily life and plainer language is used. Many of his poems have as their central subject the problematic relationship between the two sexes in that gender divisions are the result of culture rather than biology. They reflect the power relationships of society in such a way as to reject the notion of “human nature “. 
Ali Abdolrezaei’s latest themes become more universal and philosophical; his main subject is the problematic nature of language, knowledge and subjectivity. This is a language that speaks in itself and not through something outside of itself; image and language are inseparably made into oneness. He draws on a stylistic fusion of the two discourses that had for many years been deemed separate.
Ali’s poetic language also reflects a series of philosophical preoccupations. That is to say; the language of referentiality; the relation between sign and thing. No singular construction of meaning is actually created through his poetic linguistic behaviour.
What is characteristic of Ali’s poetry is the intelligibility of the unknown whose existence is tightly implicated into the known. Knowledge and subjectivity co-exist in the reality of language where knowing is coupled with not-knowing and being with not-being. It is in this sense that his poetry demonstrates the simultaneous occurrence of linguistic flow and ambiguous meaning-making activities. Ali’s is a language that speaks the impossibility of expression and, in so doing, exists in the space of its own negativity.
In the section below, you find an anthology of Ali Abdolrezaei’s poetry revolving around a wide range of subjects.
In poems 1&2, the poet finds a basis of faith in memories of childhood, before the business of the world has surpassed the magic realm of being. Here he remembers the themes and stories of his early life. Whilst playing with verse, he recognises that he was attracted by their appearance and not by what they claim to be their true substance. 
Poems 3-5 communicate a strong sense of vainness and loneliness. They do not suggest that life is a bitter tragedy. Quite the contrary, they show great drive in intervention on the one hand and acceptance, i.e. going with the flow, on the other hand. Much of his anger in these poems is directed against the pointlessness of adherence to an ideal type.
Poems 6-8 illustrate the urge to engage with the ambiguity as part of the creativity nature of poetry. The circular movement of life is reflected in these poems. There exists an expression of the idea that, as well as going to a life without end, we come from another life.
Two short poems (9&10) contain tricks of style and unusual images to depict the melancholia. Temporality appears to take centre stage in these. The greatness of the work is not in the thought or story it conveys, but in the music of the verse and the magical atmosphere it creates. All this is described in ordinary words which produce a strange and magical picture.
In poems 11-14, the misery of war and natural disasters take centre stage. These poems of fine qualities are against the futility of war and against the senior officers who avoid realising the death and destruction that their orders will cause to the men they command.
Death and sorrow are intertwined into wider social problems.
Poems 15&16 demonstrate the full swing away from the formal classical style of verse writing. Ali’s difficult style is the result of his unusual knowledge of words and bold ways of building sentences.
In poems 17-20, life in exile is a central image. Nothing can be heard besides the voice of the protagonist whose floating thoughts are searching for a new semiotic system of meanings. 
The longer poems (21-23) are on the subject of love. In these poems, there is a kind of coldness, as if he was writing without much feeling. The setting is an undefined location at an undefined time. In poem 20, the hotel, as an enclosed space, circumscribes the narrative. The hotel is the quintessential example of the exilic experience: solitary and mysterious. 

August 2007  
Written by: Mansor Pooyan

aç?yor penceremi
- günayd?n !

ve elmalar koyuyor masam?n üzerine
sararan yapraklar?n? istemeyen bir dal

nedir bu çöküntü böyle
daha ne kadar kalabilirsin bu kuytuda, haydi!

durmu? balkonda
gençliklerimi izliyorum
?imdi senin büyümü?lü?ünün k?y?s?ndan geçiyor
ve günlerin y?k?nt?lar? üzerinde balkonda duruyorlar
bamba?ka bir yerde sona erinceye kadar bazen bak???m?n ninnisiyle sallan?yor elma dallar aras?nda
bazen büyükanne bir ihtiyar delikanl?y? dü?ünüyor
bazen sar? elmalar reddediyorlar sonbahar?
bazen büyükanne…
bazen elmalar…
dün gece bir rüya gördüm
ya?am?m gibi
              ölüyordum!

çeviren: m. bülent k?l?ç

April puts blossoms on branches, my mother said.
My father said, a passing man footprints in snow.
February* stormed to the streets when
I wasn’t there to sing.
These dreams don’t fool me, I speak.
I strike so that I’m not stricken, you with me?
This horse needs a giving
Not a heavy hand, let me be!
For I’ve been lost in this poem.
My mark is that I’ve dreamt somewhere
In this world they have duped the cat,**
Her sleeping limbs spread out 
And stuck in the Gulf: She
Neither rose up against the arms commanding STOP!
Nor did she turn into stones rising, up in arms.

They stuck together to strike and were struck down.
Torture us!
In piles.
One by
One.
We have become accustomed
To the cobblestones of these alleys.
Kick us!
Some part of this shattering glass
will crack a smile.

You are folded over
The windows of this world–
Which you mistake for your toilet.
Let go of those opiumed-out cocks,
Catnapping petrol dreams.
This man, tied in thought over
His shoestrings, sheds his shoes.
This piss puddle of yours is in vain,
I’ll let you cast this earth into the sea.
Go ahead!
For concocting this ball
That you must drop,
Laud! Applaud!  
Applaud yourselves!

*The Iranian Revolution culminated in February 1979.
**The map of Iran is in the shape of a “resting cat”, with the Persian Gulf to its south.
This poem is from a volume titled, This Dear Cat.

tr. Niloufar Talebi©2004 

Permission to speak, Sir!*

If the bull slipped**
If the rooftop dropped
Would we always die under all the steel beams?

Teacher stirred his face
Peeled his hands from the pit of his pockets
And the sky sat on whatever grade it was.

Crushed desks!
The lessons that fell out of the children’s hands!!
And the walls, what they did not dream for the people!!!
A little hand crops up from the rubble
And a single finger speaks!!

Permission, Sir!
May I rise up?

tr. Niloufar Talebi©2004

*Schoolchildren in Iran ask permission for XYZ by raising their hand above their head indicating their index finger.

** According to an ancient Persian Myth of Creation, the earth rotates on the horn of a bull. Legend was if the bull coughed, the earth would slip off its horn, causing an earthquake.

I walk out of old picture frames
step into the street
return to the other side of muddy walls
to empty myself of boredom of seeing the old man who is standing in the shade
he walks out of old picture frames
and escapes into himself
so that the face that has survived in a letter in my book
can return to the opposite walls.

Translation: M. Alexandrian

Neither am I in the corner of the store
which was full of old shoes
nor the corner of the world
which is the store of the dead
I’m here
ah mirror, watch me for a while!
Should I die
what matters
if the sun shines
or there is no kerosene,
your mistake happened always in that highway
which said return!

Translation: M. Alexandrian