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Six Vowels and Twenty Three Consonants: An Anthology of Persian Poetry from Rudaki to Langroodi

ed. Ali Alizadeh and John Kinsella

Bilingual English / Persian edition

Selected and translated by Ali Alizadeh and John Kinsella

Part of our Anthologies in Translation series edited by Jean Boase-Beier

Classical poets of mediaeval Persia have long entertained Western readers with their passionate odes to love, wine, and transcendence. But does this exotic fantasy of Oriental mysticism do justice to poetry from ancient Persia and modern Iran? What about words of resistance and endurance in the face of tyranny and imperialism? What about the work of radical and experimental contemporary poets, many of them committed feminists? And what about all the idioms and lyrical devices that often get lost in translation from Farsi to English?

Six Vowels and Twenty-three Consonants is a diverse and dynamic response to these questions. It is the very first English-language anthology to focus on the entire historical range of Persian poetry from the early Middle Ages to the work of contemporary 'Gen Y' Iranian poets. It includes Classical poets such as Rumi, Hafez and Omar Khayyam as well as Modernists and Postmodernists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Edited and translated by the Iranian-born poet and translator Ali Alizadeh and the internationally-renowned poet John Kinsella, Six Vowels and Twenty-three Consonants is a groundbreaking new collection of poems presenting the wealth of poetic voices from one of the world's most important literary cultures.

9781906570576
Published June 2012

» About Ali Alizadeh and John Kinsella