Sherry Chandler » Forugh Farrokhzad
Forugh Farrokhzad
In a room as big as loneliness
my heart
which is as big as love
looks at the simple pretexts of its happiness—Forugh Farrokhzad, from “Another Birth,” translated by Karem Emami
Born in 1935, Forugh Farrokhzad published four volumes of poetry in her lifetime and made an internationally acclaimed film, The House Is Black in 1962. She was killed in an automobile accident on February 14, 1967 — it seems an irony of fate that this poet of love should have been killed on Valentine’s Day. She was 32 years old; 2007 marks the 40th anniversary of her death.
Her literary biography, A lonely woman: Forough Farrokhzad and her poetry (Three Continents Press, Washington, D.C., 1987) was written by Michael Craig Hillman.
From the New Voices International Project:
In a society where women at the time had few rights, she married at seventeen, divorced within three years and was forced to relinquish her only son to her husband. She never remarried, instead pursued an independent lifestyle and a career in poetry. Her expressions of physical and emotional intimacy, much lacking in Persian women’s poetry up to that point, placed her at the center of controversy, even among the intellectuals of the time. She was subjected to tabloid gossip and portrayed as a woman of loose moral character.
The Garden, a selection of poems by Forugh Forrokhzad, can be found at the New Voices International Project. More about her life and translations of her poems can be found at the Iran Chamber Society and, in the original Persian, spoken, and translated into many languages, at Forugh Farrokhzad.
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