4.0
Lean Against This Late Hour
ByPublisher Description
Finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
A vivid, "mesmerizing" (New York Times Magazine) portrait of life in the shadow of violence and loss, for readers of both English and Persian
The first selection of poems by renowned Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian to appear in English, this collection is a captivating, disorienting descent into the trauma of loss and its aftermath. In spare lines, Abdolmalekian conjures surreal, cinematic images that pan wide as deftly as they narrow into intimate focus. Time is a thread come unspooled: pain arrives before the wound, and the dead wait for sunrise.
Abdolmalekian resists definitive separations between cause and effect, life and death, or heaven and hell, and challenges our sense of what is fixed and what is unsettled and permeable. Though the speakers in these poems are witnesses to the deforming effects of grief and memory, they remain alive to curiosity, to the pleasure of companionship, and to other ways of being and seeing. Lean Against This Late Hour illuminates the images we conjure in the face of abandonment and ruin, and finds them by turns frightening, bewildering, ethereal, and defiant. "This time," a disembodied voice commands, "send us a prophet who only listens."
A vivid, "mesmerizing" (New York Times Magazine) portrait of life in the shadow of violence and loss, for readers of both English and Persian
The first selection of poems by renowned Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian to appear in English, this collection is a captivating, disorienting descent into the trauma of loss and its aftermath. In spare lines, Abdolmalekian conjures surreal, cinematic images that pan wide as deftly as they narrow into intimate focus. Time is a thread come unspooled: pain arrives before the wound, and the dead wait for sunrise.
Abdolmalekian resists definitive separations between cause and effect, life and death, or heaven and hell, and challenges our sense of what is fixed and what is unsettled and permeable. Though the speakers in these poems are witnesses to the deforming effects of grief and memory, they remain alive to curiosity, to the pleasure of companionship, and to other ways of being and seeing. Lean Against This Late Hour illuminates the images we conjure in the face of abandonment and ruin, and finds them by turns frightening, bewildering, ethereal, and defiant. "This time," a disembodied voice commands, "send us a prophet who only listens."
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities25 Reviews
4.0
Stef🌙
Created 4 months agoShare
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Mrs. Worldwide
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Jamie R
Created 8 months agoShare
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“I was confused thru this whole set.”
Christina Hira
Created 12 months agoShare
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Alina
Created about 1 year agoShare
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“3.4. Abdolmalekian is clearly a very talented writer. I loved the imagery, layers of meanings, and transfers of ideas in these poems. The mood was often dark but fascinating. However, at times, I found his style a little grating. I will try other works of his. In this collection, the Pattern and Long Exposure poems may be my favorites.
For example:
Long Exposure V
Forget about the machine gun
about death
and consider the saga of a bee
humming over minefields
in pursuit of a flower. (113)”
About Garous Abdolmalekian
Garous Abdolmalekian was born in 1980, days after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, and lives in Tehran. He is the author of five poetry books and the recipient of the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize. His poems have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Kurdish, and Spanish. Abdolmalekian is presently the editor of the poetry section at Chesmeh Publications in Tehran and the executive editor of publications at the Youth Poetry Office in Iran.
Ahmad Nadalizadeh is a translator from the Persian and PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Oregon.
Idra Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. She is the award-winning author of the novels Those Who Knew and Ways to Disappear. Her work has been translated into ten languages and she's translated numerous authors from Spanish and Portuguese, most recently Clarice Lispector. For her poetry and translation she has received awards from the PEN Translation Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Ahmad Nadalizadeh is a translator from the Persian and PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Oregon.
Idra Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. She is the award-winning author of the novels Those Who Knew and Ways to Disappear. Her work has been translated into ten languages and she's translated numerous authors from Spanish and Portuguese, most recently Clarice Lispector. For her poetry and translation she has received awards from the PEN Translation Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
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