Ali Abdolrezaei

A poem by Ali Abdolrezaei

Translator: Abol Froushan

Should childhood be left to itself adulthood it won’t become

mother’s foot in the door and society becomes

Society’s a road self contained could not

ride over the humps

On the waterfront a foetus alone ninth month expires

out through the door that appears in darkness comes

good and bad labels won’t kiss his temple

cause he’s both and neither

I’m good! How?! I’m bad?! I’m both

and both means one

one that neither is

Grew up on my own consciousness

a bridge on thoughts that surround all around me

come a witness to bear witness……

Ma Ma on a way ma Pa the other

and each ma da[rling] who came said this way

Still the same junction you-less nowhere there

can ear each syllable and not ‘ear

Eyeing the surround all around and seeing not

Me am not a train that on the rails keeps coming and going

Am river! riving my own womb society’s there!

Hate ma gooddeeds so bad I pretend others….

You plain door I’m looking for in darkness

that follows me in darkness till which noon? I’ve reached

ma black and stiff suite of life to me stark nakedness not a bad fit!

thirty years of this road end to end I rived to myself

I was the road, ungoable, and dying this unbelievable

that anywhere on earth is stalking where isn’t stalking superb?

The Cowards! Opening like a door unearthing the tombstone

Disgusted by how much the cheerers

jeered the wind, in ecstasy wind, airing open!

I wish I hadn’t told them!

That is when someone dies they say

in foreign house in foreign land them’s innocence

them Iraniene like me!

life alone in stiff suites they put on well turned out! like me

come we down and this very now up in the same wings

our aimless flappings asleep and dreaming(s)

knowing everyone from each other

unknowing who we are Who?!

People try but won’t happen when they say Nay! Yes, they leave a bit for yeah

No’s ill fitting suite they wear, some joined the décor some wuthering some nothing!

wherein the heart something’s passed by, thought says accept! World echoes their nos

Butting god though!!! they split the two and don’t know that both means one!

forget the one… which doesn’t exist!?

like a wave visiting the shore to come back, mesmerised by greatness this sea!

Ebb and flow

of tide in the womb foetus swimming nine moons! The Moon’s no human being!

riven mad the sea, mothers

pregnant craving salt, why’s the beauty of the moon?

No one asks!!!

riding their plains, they think of little boats! A thought of what to do

they haven’t got, how to be-have they do, they moan!

Should the road bend the cars hoot Hoooooooooot!

Ask not?

I mean the wall which Hegel bore high, was of Hegel’s straw

we don’t live we toy disaster

Have no money!

Courage! When we ask someone in a taxi for town hall?! we have not!

Begotten Elders of a village in progress!!!

Oil!? As much as you wish! `People?! Little pilgrim!

This land knows a lot of no news?

Prophets suddenly ended man alone! And life’s story, everyone writes the way they want not. No map in hand! Mankind has no address!

No one reaches themselves coming towards them who is not! Consciousness is of un

knowing, who knows is a dust bin who doesn’t, ha’swallowed the trash!

Wuthering outside of self locking doors

inside is under siege of a selfless nothing that means everything!

A hand opens its tombstone

that’s caught in another’s door

in yourselves this heaven must run! and see!

Heavy traffic cars in a rage fuuuuuuuumes!

Them’s callin’ Leili!

The earth’s soiled, Leili’s many! Wears love on his head mates her no thought on his head not may be even love! The same paper crumpled tissues that am throwing in the bin!

We don’t kiss! Just bring close the lips don’t fall in each others arms

all in our arms just holdings …

practising this game life killings!

The fellow came to my house one night looked to find him so sly! Would say one thing do another! So surreptitiously he arrived at himself that of his self was hidden…

My girl! I introduce my boy!

My wedded wife this lady This is mine! and that…!

No one is ours they self belong

for a moment Christian a moment Muslim Jewish or Buddhist they are

‘cause they’re none of these

A fugitive from the world selfishly

hunkering in the temple wrestling with fear

fear means dizzy again in giddy

Giddy am!

Responsible for what I write am not, you reading this committed me are!

I’m listening to you while eavesdropping on myself

why do you call the guy walking in himself bad?

The world has welcomed him!

Who are you to say…?

When a guy comes in, side doors say welcome

Why you…?!

We’ve skimmed the cream of waves off the sea front we’re at war with whom?!

engaging the way at the heels an if war ends

we remake masses of if from what?!

ever-ready to defend scheming to attack

each moment we are till when?!

the ones who hover self walk have no step

the road is ambiguous (Tathagata!)

wish you to followed’em don’t ask where? (Tao!)

many are steps ahead Them’s not ahead Them’s lost?

They paid the guy pausing at the door of Paradise: Please come in!

He said: No, the children are coming

No they aren’t! They say where?

Here you outlaw wine

They promise somewhere a fairy is serving wine where?

you won’t open the door they throw the fairy to some far….

The newborn when he fell in the tray shrieked his cry drawn on high

up to teenage reached and continued his cry so it grew and grew

you’re getting old won’t give up?

you jump at each scream that passes by your alley where?

the foetal pose of ‘g’ in strings of thought any lower?!

Stop the alleys! No! They grow human beings

should I be born anew with no choice, before the midwife slaps my footholes

to cry and crying I won’t let them put dot dot dot instead of what I’d love to tell you!

I has one letter and you has three

why not break up?

Alley is not against alley

That which says That I am

The tongue has a quiet in the mouth if it’s stretched its deft hand out

I say again torn up lots sewn little!

Enemies?! we mass produce friends few!

We’ve sold today so tomorrow’s sahib suddenly arrives for what? chasing whom?

Always much later much later than later!

No good!

Lying on our back in the toes of our foes unconscious the thieves arrive

what’s doing what here?

taken off on holiday perhaps a few centuries of solitude

to this life this alley this attic never knowingly coming or going

still not in the arena but

the arena called in on house visit

eye-gouging cutthroat disemboweller

so our corpse won’t bloat and float

I’m bloated! My words are on the tip of every tongue! As they stuck out their tongue at mine they became my wife! Verbs seduced my words, they don’t know writing is a fear! A fear of I know not what to do! I am the poet of grandissimo contradictions! Not for or against society just beyond the thing!

I’m busy directing the girlhood of a poem that one day will disembark from house to house…

I’m in love with ruddy cheeks and …. slapped in the face-cum-no-one like pretty to take my hand for herself?

As many gods as many have this land has skies a have-not!

And may the meaning of Lady be raising this up?

Gentlemen! Never raised my hand for one on anyone!

I’m one of those rare fickle types who prowl around the differences of questions!

I’m the difference between the differences of the world!

A bridge on thoughts that surround all around me

and sometimes I think, thought is a stone that from a distance is thrown towards me

become the landlord of homeless thoughts director missing!

director means the man whose recalls I have!

Should I wish to die I must live I know, but should I die who will bear all this solitude, who?

Tonight my bedroom light won’t go on no one knows why!?

looking at the picture of someone who wants to sneeze they won’t let it who?

in reverse of me this picture is looking for the landlord I wasn’t there?

Didn’t want to withhold wanted to catch it AT CHEewW!

The other night had the air of getting kicked I had called her name it was the wind’s fault! It threw my voice two three meters over till it got in the ear of the girl who came back instead:

Ha! I’ve changed a lot, no!?

was real crass!

Alone she was so alone that even a tramp wouldn’t travel with her I did!

she was a support I was leaning on a vacuum!

us two ever so in love love we didn’t understand means erect!

and be butchered

I didn’t understand I was with you you not there”

just two bedraggled eyes endeavoured your picture

just two hands of nights have stretched to the skies

and yes good no bestowed me lot to good god

Getting old my boy where’s your hair!?

I forgot it at the bazaar, Tehran-like people were dizzy like Tehran on a Saturday

whose Sunday was the disgusted reason of weekdays, in trance one night I transited to the day when I saw you here, when I returned you weren’t like pretty, and my hands caught in your warm embrace I forgot to take off!

Into the other that hard slapped my ear I ran, and happened upon a girl arriving like pretty

My fresh Leila

like a leech

on my right arm

is etched on my identity card

and whichever exam she passed marked F!

but for the ivy climbing ivy the house façade had no hand

wouldn’t come up my street

We’d go to her house, the street and I!

A lit window up there fallen on high

that night tomorrow coughing in South West wouldn’t come

scalping redskins tacked on carry attack a tack

My spouse was shut bathed and showered inside my heart she left!

A pair of hands knotted round my waist she badly forgot to take off she left!

she no longer came round even if the house went round a lot gone not gone!

There the sun had risen to the sky

Tuesday was on the table

in here from behind the window she was prodding their house!

Could hear the vacuum cleaner everywhere!

No show! and her mother showed up and cleaned our house!

Leaves on high tremblings roots in the deep creepings

Freud in depth shovings

Jung yin and yang renderings

motherings, not lovings but upbringings and spewings bringing the children up one by one! Ach so roof tops baskings!

twice prostrate don’t know shame, had taken Pa out of the house one day to return a warm baker!

in through the window came an unbounded hand! lounged around, came to my bedroom, let go she’s not there! what a senseless grapple with myself have I to become human? Is it compulsory? won’t become one!

standing alone everywhere Pa has grown up Ma… Hey Mr! Have you not seen our house!?

should look so I won’t forget listen to this roundabout, the mortar bridge and the fishmongers who sold a youth to Tehran. Should say hi to the motor rickshaw so ma Ma won’t lose ma Pa! to these people going home in their espadrilles looking askance at me one should… How do I look?

in my apartment, myself! a tide of tourists promenading, I have to enter the No Entry! visit the back market, ask the price of mackerel to price the price! So like, like always one must be like everyone like tired I am like always of everyone. I have to in a town that forbids offence offend!

I have to thigh into the Shrine of Ali!

Salaam to Ali resident La Elaha el Allah me resident La Elaha el Allah O residents of La Elaha el Allah, Me La Elaha el Allah La…La!

My voice is warmed by your ear! Anyone who forgets me will abolish you! Me called after this and that! Am not! It’s just to trick the world. These thoughts are all guests in me. The previous and the next poems live! They must go so I tend meself if you want I’ll have nothing to do with you if not I’ll follow you around, I’ve anchored in Anchorage so me Pa can finish this fake

When I arrived I told me Ma I had a dream last night she brought me tea my dream came true!

Had arrived at a simple door that I’m looking for in the dark that followed me in the dark till when…?!

I came back!

In the street the hooting was continuous. In my right pocket hearing was deaf. Sudden screech of brakes, purchased a pedestrian, and shoved it in his trouser pocket and I’m conked drunk on the bar counter! On this same pound note put a plaster on my brow Blood won’t stop!

I have drop by drop from me dripping and have not

My tomorrow’s lost in the week Sunday bored Monday beat Tuesday Sun Moon Mars wed on red nose day guide to underworld, fifth day Guru prostrates numbered days marching snails involuting in nothing!

NOTHING MEANS EVERYTHING

Dictionary Rewrite!

Mansor Pooyan

Compared to the artistic means at one’s disposal when creating music or painting, W.H.Auden contemplated that for the poet, language has many advantages. In artistic discourse, there are three pronouns, three tenses and speech can occur in both the active/passive voice (1).
Ali Abdolrezaei idiosyncratically invokes all language possibilities in the narration of his subject matter. True or false his verses may be, but the deeds are distinctive of his style of diction/imagery and syllabic spell appropriate to the occasion. His approach breaks with the traditional Aristotelian narrative of a beginning, a middle and an end.
There are many poems in which the use of pronouns is fragmentarily accompanied by disorientated persona to indicate the heterogeneity of modern times.

Ali’s lines, reflecting his temperament, do not please critics who prefer poets to remain stable entities both in their history and in their writing. His poetry questions the stability of the relationship between writer and critic as the registers he uses are subject to constant change. It is fluidity that makes Ali Abdolrezaei’s work so vibrant and so difficult to pin down. The poet’s creativity ensures the truth of his poetic identity can never, by definition, be found. His poetry is not the Word made Flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh. The meaning of his poems, like the meaning of a text on his biography, is not perpetually fixed. Thus, there is no original meaning that we can recover.
He is young and speaks for the new generation of Iranian aesthetics. The trajectory of Abdolrezaei’s career begins in a blaze of vision capable of speaking in the voice of a generation with multi-facetted vibrations. At times, he appears to portray deeper sceneries of the new artistic temperaments and the young’s cultural chasms with the past amid a repressive political regime. Abdolrezaei’s reputation as a poet speaking in the voice of his time spread in the early 1990s with an impressive range of Iranian critics and writers making statements about him.
Abdolrezaei’s life and poetry as constructions are of a critical nature. Layers of narrative and analysis, wit and prejudice confront his readers. We should remain vigilant that at a fundamental level, his life and work are “open stories” accommodating diverse interpretations. Abdolrezaei is particularly aware that his poetry is destined to undergo transformations beyond his control. His resistance to having a biography written about him is part of this awareness to his future literary metamorphoses.

When considering Abdolrezaei’s work, the narrative makes up the constructed “I” that inhabits the poems. In other words, the poet is simply dispersed and lives in a bundle of texts strung together. The Abdolrezaei we perceive as a poet is also the product of discourses, which run through and beyond him. It is the wholeness and that depth of form coming from inner experience which allows intertexual readings their scope.

The poem “Censorship”, strictly speaking, is an inferred biography. Although he prefers that no biography be written, he hopes attentive readers of his poems can extract as much knowledge from his language constructions as possible.
This poem is soaked in metamorphosis: as a very comprehensive metaphor. This motif in both literary and real forms crops up constantly. The weird isolation the helpless rejection and the tragic perversion forced on him are so intense that it would seem impossible in almost any other society.
 

My heart is bleeding for the poet whose queue of words is getting longer
for the branch less sparrow who’s swallowed its twitter
for the restitution of a crow with no overhead wire
for myself
gone from the house like electricity

This poem is written from a heightened, desperate, point of view. The final assertion is the admission of the metamorphosis he underwent as to become a poet.
 

I was somebody
Did the foolish thing became a poet!
 

To be a poet is a foolish decision committed, oddly, by tragic heroes - with a suggestion of scapegoat or criminal. This transformation belongs to Us because We are negated by Them and Their alienation.
Poetry is a transcendental symbol for rebirth. It is only through such experience that we can leave the old baggage for good and be reborn. There exists a purification notion of poetry: a sustained flood of metaphor shifts throughout the poem.
In the exile, from his cold heights, he can see differently; free of the old perspectives one returns with new insights.
 

How this side of being where I am is all the more other-sided in Iran
Fathurt mothurt my brothurt!
My condition is more critical than hurt
writing’s more emasculated than me
 

Writing is akin to mountain climbing or to the hero’s dangerous actions/ journey. Analogy of the task of writing poetry is extended even to the painful labour of human birth.
Poetry is a means by which to realise that the well-entrenched discursive structures and social interests attempt to supervise meaning and truth. In the above stanza, the suffix `hurt` is added to the closest endeared family roles (e.g. brother; mother and father) to imply the painful sense of meaning associated with the concept Identity. Although the poet is reborn in exile, his sense of belonging to the beloved home is still hurtful. Here a symptomatic reading of the poem, as a metaphor, is called for.
 

In pursuit of the lesson I did at school
I’m no longer Jack the lover to my Jill
I’m doing my new homework
You cross it out
 

His estrangement from society, either indigenous or exiled, allows him to see its shortcomings. Poetry for Abdolrezaei is a vehicle by which he treats serious subjects in an ironically lowbrow manner.
The most important poetry technique that Abdolrezaei explores in his work is what we might call the ‘unexpected’ principle. He allows the reader to develop a series of expectations which he then disappoints by injecting incongruity. In the stanza above, the second line negates the first and the forth line is demanding an action to annihilate the third. Once the reader has exerted the conscious effort needed to solve these incongruities, s/he may inescapably come to accept a fresh evaluation as to rethink their life on the basis of the poem’s insights.
Abdolrezaei’s position comes close to trapping the elusive truth and making it available to the conscious mind. The truth that this poem reveals may be a serious insistence on the impossibility that humankind speaks truth. By the same token, it is inevitable that humankind suffers from past experiences.
 

I in my life who am pen like to the lines of this meagre page am mother
The cat’s paws are still prancing
to scare the mouse
running for the hole they filled
 

Poetry is itself an instance of play-acting to reveal something to actors who may never come to realise what they are really like off-stage. This poem implies the poet can say something true only on the page face, as the stage on which he verbally plays. The poem asserts that speaking the truth may irritate the reader. So Abdolrezaei indeed contradicts Keats’s axiom that “poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity”. His poetry is meant to scare those incapable to face truth. It requires an effort to discover the exact relevance of his allusions used in this stanza. In poems, he acts as cat scaring readers, mice-like, to run for the hole.
 

In the massacre of my words
they’ve beheaded my last line
and blood ink like is hitting on paper
there’s death stretched over the page
 

The poem starts in earnest with an outright violence “massacre of my words” which is responsible for the rest of it. The rebellious massacre of words occurs when the assumptions behind `truth` are confronted. Via a system of dichotomies, someone who desires `beauty` assumes it is `truth`. Those who are shocked into moral awareness beyond the dichotomy of the pretty and the ugly must have waged such a bloody war on the poet’s words. Their demands are simple and absolute. The naïve, enraged audience marched on to massacre his words and behead his last lines. But their enduring belief would bring them to grief elsewhere.
This “Achilles’ heel” constitutes the contrast between what the poet looks for and what the power relations expect him to show.
Despite the expectations, the poet moves, deliberately on not trying to be aesthetically pleasing or emotionally adhering to the dualistic vision of `manhood` versus `womanhood` as in the nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill” learnt at school.
 

a new gun has finished off the world
and I imported goods like through this alley’s doors
am still the very meagre room that emigrated
 

The new weaponry safeguards the same long literary and iconographic tradition believing that aesthetic qualities signify righteous ones.
The theme of pain, running through the entire poem, refers to the difficulties inherent in the execution of poetry that might elevate humans from such prejudiced assumptions. This endeavour forced the poet to leave his homeland and immigrate to Britain. In spite of such a huge step, he says he is still the same “meagre room” in an alley back home. The lines in the following stanza describe his plight not yet relieved in the exile.
 

and London with its hair highlights of a weather is still
sisterly awaiting
Death to stretch over my body
for life to kill me again
 

Abdolrezaei’s experiences of life in London are presented here in an abstract form because literal depictions can’t be met by instrumental language.
If poetry isn’t wish-fulfilment, what is it? Abdolrezaei would say it’s a means through which our aspirations for the developmental truth and existential rebirth are satisfied.
In the very last stanza, the poet appears to have contempt for poetry:
 

I was somebody
Did the foolish thing became a poet!
 

Is his assertion to be taken at face value? His poetry says it all for him: he made his poem and it is our turn to “cross it out”, censor it or face reality.
This heavy metal poem exhaustingly manages to achieve the metamorphosis of pain and vision into art. The beauty of the representation and the ugliness it represents are both affirmed and concealed under the success of its illusion.
In this poem, the role of the reader is crucial; for what it sets up is an open-ended interpretation in which the hermeneutic circle is never closed.
Abdolrezaei’s poetry is a carnival rite rather than a solemn memorial, and his language has an astonishing lexical range and ironic implications.

September 2008

 

1- DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT-VIII-1959
2- I should thank Dr. Helen Pearce once again for her friendship and kind contribution in auditing this article.

Ali Abdolrezaei

Translator: Abol Froushan

In the massacre of my words

they’ve beheaded my last line

and blood ink like is hitting on paper

there’s death stretched over the page

and life like a window ajar shattered by a rock

a new gun has finished off the world

and I imported goods like through this alley’s doors

am still the very meagre room that emigrated

I in my life who am pen like to the lines of this meagre page am mother

The cat’s paws are still prancing

to scare the mouse

running for the hole they filled

In pursuit of the lesson I did at school

I’m no longer Jack the lover to my Jill

I’m doing my new homework

You cross it out

And in the girl who will tumble at this poem’s end

build a house

filled with a door open like a wound

and from in-between the edges of death

like a room gone from this house lived happily

a girl who wanting to make me her own

would throw morsels in her voice to tease me over

to the temple of her body

for my eyes to keep whirling and whirling to make a Dervish of me again

How the eyes

these empty sockets

in between the love making of two are thousand handed

How this side of being where I am is all the more other-sided in Iran

Fathurt mothurt my brothurt!

My condition is more critical than hurt

writing’s more emasculated than me

and London with its hair highlights of a weather is still

sisterly awaiting

Death to stretch over my body

for life to kill me again

My heart is bleeding for the poet whose queue of words is getting longer

for the branch less sparrow who’s swallowed its twitter

for the restitution of a crow with no overhead wire

for myself

gone from the house like electricity

I was somebody

Did the foolish thing became a poet!

Translator’s detections
Abol Froushan  

 

The poem opens on the site of a massacre, a beheading, a blood letting which happens in writing, to the site of writing, or more specifically to a poem which by virtue of its delicate structure (like the lover’s body or a house of cards) is vulnerable to the loss of a word, the crossing out of a key part of speech, within earshot of the new weapon of censorship.

The poem therefore begins and continues in a reflexive discourse on composition and violation, seduction and possession, death and resurrection, hope and remorse, acted out in a  kaleidoscope of birth and death, free speech and censorship, live text and white page like a shroud stretched over cut verse, in a cat and mouse play where the hole on the wall is no more than an ink blot, school lessons and nursery rhymes from Jack & Jill in exile. 

The poet  may be reflected in the mirror of a window ajar, broken by the rock of  the censor - so the poet’s text is slaughtered by the new weapon of censorship, but is the poet also declaring death on the transparency of language? You kill my poems by crossing out the head of a last line, but this poem is my woman, my girl whom I denude (alethea, truth as unveiling ) in private but goes out dressed in textile. 

and I   imported goods like through this alley’s doors

            am still the very meagre room that emigrated

Imported goods, traded for currency of language? These two lines seem to sit on a metaphor of glolbal trade. Goods are imported through these alley’s doors I know so well, in exchange for me and my language, this meagre room that emigrated, the censor has exported me - in lieu.

Could it be the poet under the sway of exile, is set on exchanging his goods for the currency of host language of English for Persian (exchanging as if in a flat world), before talking about a sisterly London? The new language like a new homework to do? The girl who will tumble at the end of the poem is the poet in remorse of being poet who thinks life, once killed, will begin twice anew? Like the phoenix of language? 

To the poet language is his home, his place of abode, his country, the site of his restitution, the temple of his soul. Abdolrezaei in Censorship with his mothering pen,  is under the same sway, the same meagre room that emigrated. And here the chapter on exile begins. In the Persian original, the room’s adjective, koochak (= small) rhymes with migration =kooch.  I have maintained this in English by using ‘meagre’ which is the not just small but also lacking strength. 

????? ? ???? ?? ?? ????? ????

???? ???? ????? ??????? ??  ???? ?????

????        ?????? ???? ?? ?? ????? ?? ???

??? ?? ?????

 

 

In pursuit of the lesson I did at school

I’m no longer Jack the lover to my Jill

I’m doing my new homework

You cross it off

So Abdolrezaei writes himself into the fate of his school book characters Sara and Dara (here rendered in English as the Nursery Rhyme characters Jack and Jill tumbling down the hill with a pale of water, which chimes with the girl who falls at the end of the poem) who loved each other (like a poet loves language) but now Dara is doing his new homework post-exile. The poet writes himself and in writing renders the potency or impotence of his ever renewing identity post-exile. It seems he is doing his English homework, something out of reach to the censor in Iran. So he challenges them to cross it out, or like a teacher to tick it off.  The You of the poem is no other than then censor.

What’s this new homework about?

And in the girl who will tumble at this poem’s end

build a house

filled with a door open like a wound

and from in-between the edges of death

like a room gone from this house       lived happily

To build a house of this girl, shape her like a poem or a room that’s like an open wound (poet) in this house of language, and export the poem/poet into other tongues where  she will live happily, freed from the jaws of death by censure. The girl will want to woo me with the lure of her voice, bring me over to the temple of Dervishes and because of her, I will be a Dervish again, wear my white skirted gown representing the shroud of death and whirl and whirl in the Sema of the catharsis of language in the throes of a poem. How language is thousand handed. This site of a sight. The two empty sockets. In the pavilion of lover’s body.

The parallelism between door and Dervish[1], death stretched on the page by censorship and the white dress of the whirling Dervish is an astonishing gesture towards the censor, oozing various meanings.

???? ??? ???? ???? ?? ???? ?? ???? ??? ??? ???????    

        ????   ?????     ???????

 

            How this side of being where I am is all the more other-sided in Iran

Fathurt            mothurt           my brothurt!

There goes the most staggering of word plays. In Persian Abdolrezaei adds a suffix d to Pedar, Madar, Baradar, to make Pedard, madard… where dard is the word for pain. In English the same combination could fortuitously be found to make portmanteau words on display – signifying a family of pain endeared roles. A harking back to home (in the other-sided Iran), itself the source of hurtful dysfunction. The painful sense of otherness is reborn in exile (good morning Levinas!) after birth at home with those we love and who love but inevitably hurt us in our growth. Pain is stretched in each word that calls our dearest and with each word a new pain, a new symptomatic reading is called for. For this poet is suffering from an advanced word-pain – verbosis. A condition that is more critical than hurt. Especially when situated in exile and striving to grow a new tongue (which has been cut – emasculated). Here writing is a metaphor that refers to itself as well as manhood, speakerhood.

London has been emasculated before birth – she is waiting sisterly. He, the poet will wear the shroud skirt of Dervishes and let new life whirl out of the death of a tongue for another.

Therein perhaps lies the secret of the lengthening queue of words – awaiting to be translated into text on a page, for lack of a branch to rest on, for the singing of the sparrow and the wisdom of the crow.

The recent spate of blackouts in Iran notwithstanding, this poet (AA) is gone from the house, given up being somebody at home, venturing into a London that promises to wait for the poet to finish off his new homework, master his pain and the new tongue, to rise up from the ashes of his identity in being other but on this side of being, rather than the other. If so, this translation prefigures a figure to come, pre-translated.

Abol Froushan, London, August 2008

Epilogue – Degree 0

By way of an epilogue on style in translation, lets consider a couple of samples of extreme syntax in the poem:

I in my life who am pen like to the lines of this meagre page  am mother

…

How this side of being where I am is all the more other-sided in Iran

The intersection of phrases which form a signature of Abdolrezaei’s writing, are visible in these two lines of Censorship. I in my life, I am pen like to the lines of this page, I am mother to this meagre page. Make an intersection of these lines, a condensation of more than three lines into one, if you will (un)like the one I made.

The second line is a much more organic enjambement of phrases, an intersection of sections of text – how /this side of being/ where I am, this place where I am is all the more/other-sided/ in Iran. Isn’t this what we should call ellipsis of phrase?

In the portmanteau words fathurt, mothurt and brothurt, we see this intersection happening at the syllabic level with the fusion of bro/mo/fa/ther with hurt. Thus somehow the possibility of such a chemical reaction was inherent in the mother tongue (pedard, madard, baradard-am) as well as the other tongue though be it English and not in French – where this fortuitous possibility may not arise.

There are other samples of this syntactical style where sections of text, of syllables, subclauses and phrases intersect, in Abdolrezaei’s style. Each section brings its own dimension and each intersection  will bring a new dimension constituting the elements of a cubist syntax and signification.

This may constitute a new departure in the style originating in e.e. Cummings where the syntax of a sentence is jumbled so words take on new juxtapositions. e.g.

truer how much

than yearning

(newer to touch

than morning)

                        your life is

only like one

star after rain

The End

of a beginning

Abol Froushan

London

29 August 2008

 

[1]            http://www.sln.org.uk/re/whirling.htm

            Dervish from a Persian word for ‘doorway’ or ‘door-sill’.

            A dervish is someone at the ‘door’ of enlightenment or union with God.

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

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