At this time, a book of poems arrived at my desk , that wonderful representation of Iranian womanhood, poet and rebel, Forugh Farrokhzad.
The same day there was news that a vice-president of Iran, the famous Mother Mary who had grown up in the USA and became famous during the USA Embassy Occupation, had been infected with Coronavirus.
Hypocrite to the core, this “revolutionary” against the Satan? USA has her son studying in the USA, like many other “revolutionaries” have their families safely ensconced in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia etc..
They are immune to the difficulties of the average Iranian families who cannot make ends meet, who cannot get medications and cannot afford to buy meat, tomato, banana etc.
and the intellectual, energetic, visionary, futuristic Forugh? what happened to her?
After the 1979 revolution in Iran, the new Islamic government officially banned Farrokhzad’s poems and her publisher was ordered to stop printing her books. He refused and subsequently eh was jailed and his factory burned to the ground. (from the introduction to her book of poems that I received yesterday)
From the Foreword to the book by Alicia Ostriker
At a certain moment, women in cultures that glamorise their images and suffocate their minds, that set them on pedestals while requiring their silence and modesty, cease to be either silent or modest. Some of them become poets and sometimes these poets slice through convention into an entire new realm of reality, altering forever what poetry can do. Russians have the revolutionary generation of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva. For American poetry, one thinks of Plath and Sexton. Israelis have Dahlia Ravikovich and Yona Wallach. Torch passes to torch. This is the company in which the Iranian Forugh Farrokhzad’s poetry bekongs.
You can choose which woman you want to represent IRAN!
Original Blogger URL: https://medicoanthropologist.blogspot.com/2020/03/two-women-from-iran-who-represents.html