The University of Arkansas Press

Sin
Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad
Translated by Sholeh Wolpé
Foreword by Alicia Ostriker

Iran’s Rebel Woman Poet

“Sholeh Wolpé’s translations are hypnotic in their beauty and force. This book will be treasured by readers who crave not a clash of cultures but a connection.”
—From the foreword
“In a world where cultures and religions are recklessly facing off, Sholeh Wolpé writes careful poems that cast a light on some of what we all hold in common.”
—Billy Collins, on The Scar Saloon

For the first time, the work of Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad is being brought to English-speaking readers through the perspective of a translator who is a poet in her own right, fluent in both Persian and English and intimately familiar with each culture. Sin includes the entirety of Farrokhzad’s last book, numerous selections from her fourth and most enduring book, Reborn, and selections from her earlier work and creates a collection that is true to the meaning, the intention, and the music of the original poems.
Farrokhzad was the most significant female Iranian poet of the twentieth century, as revolutionary as Russia’s Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva and America’s Plath and Sexton. She wrote with a sensuality and burgeoning political consciousness that pressed against the boundaries of what could be expressed by a woman in 1950s and 1960s Iran. She paid a high price for her art, shouldering the disapproval of society and her family, having her only child taken away, and spending time in mental institutions. Farrokhzad died in a car accident in 1967 at the age of thirty-two. Sin is a tribute to the work and life of this remarkable poet.

Sholeh Wolpé is the author of The Scar Saloon and Rooftops of Tehran. Her poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many publications. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Alicia Ostriker is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, most recently No Heaven.

October
5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 160 pages
$22.95 cloth
ISBN 978-1-55728-861-5 | 1-55728-861-5