Roger Sedarat

Last updated

Roger Sedarat is an Iranian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator.

Contents

Creative Work/Publications

He is the author of four poetry collections: Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic, which won Ohio UP's 2007 Hollis Summers' Prize, [1] Ghazal Games (Ohio University Press, 2011), [2] Foot Faults: Tennis Poems (David Roberts Books, 2016), and Haji as Puppet: an Orientalist Burlesque, which won the Tenth Gate Prize for a Mid-Career Poet (Word Works, 2017). In his poetry, he frequently crosses the post-modern American tradition with the classical Persian tradition, reproducing his hybrid identity in his verse. His poetry and literary translations have appeared in such journals as Poetry, New England Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review . He has also published the chapbooks: Eco-Logic of the Word Lamb/Translations & Imitations (Ghost Bird Press, 2016) and From Tehran to Texas (Cervena Barva, 2007). Co-author and co-translator of "Nature and Nostalgia in the Poetry of Nader Naderpour (Cambria, 2017), he received the 2015 Willis Barnstone Prize Award in Translation. Under the name of "Haji," he writes poetry and stages dramatic performances that both challenge oppressive regimes, the construct of "Poetry," and the western gaze of the Middle East in the 21st century.

Academic Publications

Trained as an Americanist, his early study of American poetry, New England Landscape History in America Poetry: a Lacanian View (Cambria, 2011), relates the verse of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Lowell to the figuration of landscape history through psychoanalytic theory. His most recent academic book, Emerson in Iran: the American Appropriation of Persian Poetry (SUNY Press, 2019) is the first full-length study of Persian Influence in the work of the seminal American poet, philosopher, and translator, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Extending the current trend in transnational studies back to the figural origins of both the United States and Iran, Sedarat's comparative readings of Platonism and Sufi mysticism reveal how Emerson managed to reconcile through verse two countries so seemingly different in religion and philosophy. By tracking various rhetorical strategies through a close interrogation of Emerson's own writings on language and literary appropriation, he exposes the development of a latent but considerable translation theory in the American literary tradition, further showing how generative Persian poetry becomes during Emerson's nineteenth century, and how such formative effects continue to influence contemporary American poetry and verse translation. A book chapter, “Middle Eastern-American Literature: A Contemporary Turn in Emerson Studies,” appearing in A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture [3] , examines Ralph Waldo Emerson's influence upon such Arab-American writers as Ameen Rihani.

Personal Background

He was born in Normal, Illinois to an Iranian father and American mother, and grew up in San Antonio, Texas. After attending the University of Texas at Austin, he completed an MA in English/Creative Writing at Queens College, City University of New York, [4] and a PhD in English at Tufts University [5] He currently teaches poetry and literary translation in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation as well as courses in literary theory, American and Middle-Eastern American literature, and poetics in the English Department at Queens College, City University of New York. [6]

Related Research Articles

Rumi 13th-century Persian poet

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā, and Mevlevî/Mawlawī, but more popularly known simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States.

Poetry Form of literature

Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.

Hafez Persian poet and mystic (1325-1390)

Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī, known by his pen name Hafez and as "Hafiz", was a Persian lyric poet, whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as a pinnacle of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of people in the Persian-speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.

Persian literature Oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language

Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia and South Asia where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language. For example, Rumi, one of the best-loved Persian poets, born in Balkh or Wakhsh, wrote in Persian and lived in Konya, at that time the capital of the Seljuks in Anatolia. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, the wider Caucasus, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians or Iranians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included. At the same time, not all literature written in Persian is written by ethnic Persians or Iranians, as Turkic, Caucasian, and Indic poets and writers have also used the Persian language in the environment of Persianate cultures.

Ahmad Shamlou Iranian poet and writer

Ahmad Shamlou was an Iranian poet, writer, and journalist. Shamlou was arguably the most influential poet of modern Iran. His initial poetry was influenced by and in the tradition of Nima Youshij. In fact, Abdolali Dastgheib, Iranian literary critic, argues that Shamlou is one of the pioneers of modern Persian poetry and has had the greatest influence, after Nima, on Iranian poets of his era. Shamlou's poetry is complex, yet his imagery, which contributes significantly to the intensity of his poems, is accessible. As the base, he uses the traditional imagery familiar to his Iranian audience through the works of Persian masters like Hafez and Omar Khayyám. For infrastructure and impact, he uses a kind of everyday imagery in which personified oxymoronic elements are spiked with an unreal combination of the abstract and the concrete thus far unprecedented in Persian poetry, which distressed some of the admirers of more traditional poetry.

Rudaki Persian poet, the founder of Persian poetry

Abū 'Abd Allāh Ja'far ibn Muḥammad Rūdakī, better known as Rudaki (رودکی), and also known as "Adam of Poets" (آدم‌الشعرا), was a Persian poet regarded as the first great literary genius of the Modern Persian language.

Hushang Ebtehaj

Amir Hushang Ebtehaj (Persian: هوشنگ ابتهاج, with the pen name of H. E. Sayeh is an Iranian poet of the 20th century, whose life and work spans many of Iran's political, cultural and literary upheavals.

Arabic poetry Form of poetry

Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that.

Simin Behbahani

Simin Behbahani, her surname also appears as Bihbahani was a prominent Iranian contemporary poet, lyricist and activist. She is known for her poems in a ghazal-style of poetic form. She was an icon of modern Persian poetry, Iranian intelligentsia and literati who affectionately refer to her as the lioness of Iran. She was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in literature, and "received many literary accolades around the world."

<i>Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi</i> Large collection of poems by Rumi

Divan-i Kebir, also known as Divan i Shams, is a collection of poems written by the Persian poet and Sufi mystic Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, also known as Rumi. A compilation of lyric poems written in the Persian language, it contains more than 40,000 verses and over 3,000 ghazals. While following the long tradition of Sufi poetry as well as the traditional metrical conventions of ghazals, the poems in the Divan showcase Rumi’s unique, trance-like poetic style. Written in the aftermath of the disappearance of Rumi’s beloved spiritual teacher, Shams-i Tabrizi, the Divan is dedicated to Shams and contains many verses praising him and lamenting his disappearance. Although not a didactic work, the Divan still explores deep philosophical themes, particularly those of love and longing.

Lucien Stryk was an American poet, translator of Buddhist literature and Zen poetry, and former English professor at Northern Illinois University (NIU).

Nezim Frakulla

Nezim Berati, alternatively known as Nezim Frakulla or Ibrahim Nezimi, was the first major poet among the Bejtexhinj, popular poets in the Muslim tradition who wrote in Albanian but used Arabic script. He was born in the village of Frakull near Fier and lived part of his life in Berat. Frakulla studied in Istanbul where he wrote his first poetry in Turkish, Persian and perhaps Arabic, including two divans. About 1731, he returned to Berat where he is known to have been involved in literary rivalry with other poets of the period, notably with Imam Ali, mufti of Berat. Between 1731 and 1735 he composed a divan and various other poetry in Albanian, including an Albanian-Turkish mini-dictionary in verse form. Although we do not possess the whole of the original divan, we do have copies of ca. 110 poems from it. Some of his verse was put to music and survived the centuries orally. Nezim Frakulla asserts that he was the first person to compose a divan in Albanian.

The influence of Persian literature in Western culture is historically significant. In order to avoid what E.G. Browne calls "an altogether inadequate judgment of the intellectual activity of that ingenious and talented people" (E.G.Browne, p4), many centers of academia throughout the world today from Berlin to Japan have permanent programs for Persian studies for the literary heritage of Persia.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Anwer Zahidi (born July 9, 1946) is a Pakistani Urdu author of more than twelve books of poetry, short stories, travelogue and translations. After completing his graduation in science from Punjab University, Anwer Zahidi received a degree of MBBS from Nishtar Medical College, Multan in 1970.

Sōiku Shigematsu

Sōiku Shigematsu is a Japanese priest of Myoshin-ji branch of Rinzai School of Zen Buddhism, abbot of Shōgen-ji Temple in Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka, author and translator of books and essays on Zen that were instrumental in spreading interest in Zen literary tradition to the West in the latter half of the 20th century. Shigematsu taught English literature at Shizuoka University also visiting the United States on several occasions, most notably in 1985-6 as a Fulbright scholar. He won the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review in 1987.

Dick Davis is an English–American poet, university professor, and translator of verse, who is affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry.

Balram Shukla Indian poet and academic

Balram Shukla is an academician, poet and author based in New Delhi. He is a self-taught scholar of Sanskrit and Indian literature. He works as a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Delhi. He is a scholar of Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Persian and Prakrit. He writes poetry in both Sanskrit and Persian, and also translates Persian poetry into Sanskrit using the same poetic metres. He has been awarded the Badrayan Vyas Award for Sanskrit in 2013 by the President of India. He has authored eight books.

Shirazi Turk is a ghazal by the 14th-century Persian poet Hāfez of Shiraz. It has been described as "the most familiar of Hafez's poems in the English-speaking world". It was the first poem of Hafez to appear in English, when William Jones made his paraphrase "A Persian Song" in 1771, based on a Latin version supplied by his friend Károly Reviczky. Edward Granville Browne wrote of this poem: "I cannot find so many English verse-renderings of any other of the odes of Ḥáfiẓ." It is the third poem in the collection of Hafez's poems, which are arranged alphabetically by their rhymes.

Alā yā ayyoha-s-sāqī is a ghazal by the 14th-century poet Hafez of Shiraz. It is the opening poem in the collection of Hafez's 530 poems.

References

  1. Sedarat, Roger. Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic : Poems. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008. ISBN   978-0-8214-1774-4 WoelsCat
  2. "Ghazal Games: Poems". www.ohioswallow.com. Retrieved 2016-10-17.
  3. LaRocca, David; Miguel-Alfonso, Ricardo (2016-01-05). A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Dartmouth College Press. ISBN   9781611688306.
  4. WorldCat
  5. WorldCat
  6. NY DailyNews July 13th 2010