In bringing this chorus of creativity to life, Sheema Kalbasi has performed a service that will be remembered for long. The voice that comes through The Poetry of Iranian Women is daring rather than desperate, decisive rather than doleful, and fairly composed, given the constraints that govern the lives of the featured poets, as women and as artists. In bringing this chorus of creativity to life, Sheema Kalbasi has performed a service that will be remembered for long.

– Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak

Real and groundbreaking, this anthology edited by Sheema Kalbasi is a breathtaking collection of Iranian women's poems and is an event not to be missed. The Poetry of Iranian Women is full of passionate and vital poems that speak of universal themes with grace, craft, sensual imagery, and sociopolitical angst. This compendium affords a wonderful opportunity to learn what is being written today by women of this ancient Persian culture of the Mid-East cradle of civilization.

– Daniela Gioseffi

A spiritual regeneration from artists who have taken back their god, their religion, their home and most importantly themselves, Sheema Kalbasi has created this volume of poetry with great force and desire. The Poetry of Iranian Women transcends nationalities simultaneously highlighting the passion and dignity of the poetic collection it embodies.

– Larry Jaffe

Not only does Sheema Kalbasi in The Poetry of Iranian Women give us the voices of these talented, passionate Iranian poets but also shows us that the depths and textures of their culture revealed in verse is also history, political science, sociology, and psychology. Occasionally, there comes along a person like her who understands where the lessons of poetry intersect with other areas of scholarship.

    – Roger Humes

Selections from the Poetry of Iranian Women

Those Days

Those days                                                                                                                                      Poetry                                                                                                                                                                         Was my room                                                                                                                                                          And wherever I felt unsafe                                                                                                                                                                          I gravitated into its eternal sanctuary 

These days                                                                                                                                                         There aren’t any rooms                                                                                                                                      That can harbor me against the crowd                                                                                                          and behind every window                                                                                                                                  inside and outside every room                                                                                                                       a two-faced clown sneers 

Fereshteh Sari

IT’S A MAN’S WORLD TO THE END OF THE END—

I am a woman. Simply.

To look at me is a sin —
I must be veiled.

To hear my voice is a temptation
that must be hushed.

For me to think is a crime
so I must not be schooled.

I am to bear it all
and die quietly, without complaint.

Only then can I be admitted to the court of God
where I must repose naked on a marble cloud
feed virtuous men succulent grapes
pour them wine from golden vats
and murmur songs of love…

Sholeh Wolpé

 

Time

That old man sitting on the bench
is you, a little boy biking around
Your hair is now white, spread
by the traces of age
and I? My youthful skin
has persistent wrinkles of regret

Mahboubeh Shadzi

 

THE SECRET

Locks on the bolt
Secrets behind the doors
And the moist Jasmine perfume
Panting at the night
The jar of thirst in a summer afternoon
This musky willow shade and I
These birds and I, do not sing!

Mahshid Naghashpor