As an Iranian American poet, Roger Sedarat fuses Western and Eastern traditions to reinvent the classical Persian form of the ghazal. For its humor as well as its spirituality, the poems in this collection can perhaps best be described as “Wallace Stevens meets Rumi.” Perhaps most striking is the poet’s use of the ancient ghazal form in the tradition of the classical masters like Hafez and Rumi to politically challenge the Islamic Republic of Iran’s continual crackdown on protesters. Not since the late Agha Shahid Ali has a poet translated the letter as well as the spirit of this form into English, using musicality and inventive rhyme to extend the reach of the ghazal in a new language and tradition.
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In his new collection of poetry, Roger Sedarat strikes the perfect balance between Eastern and Western expression, between the modern and the medieval, and between the sacred and the profane. A delight on every page, one can’t help but imagine that if Hafez, Rumi, and other Sufi mystic poets — even Goethe — were transported to the twenty–first century, their tweets might read something like this.
Hooman Majd — author of The Ayatollahs’ Democracy: An Iranian Challenge
These poems are to be savored in their audacity — in turn witty, erotic, ludic, learned, engaged. Roger Sedarat’s ghazals bridge the form’s (and the poet’s) Persian sources to American demotic language, and open couplet windows on transnational reality.
Marilyn Hacker — winner of the National Book Award and author of Names: Poems
Ghazal Games overflows with intelligent charm: its well-formed couplets, fueled by iconoclasm, are blessed with clarity, goodheartedness, pizzazz, and prankishness. Let’s crown Roger Sedarat the king of Carnival; long may he reign.
Wayne Koestenbaum — author of Best–Selling Jewish Porn Films
About the Author
Roger Sedarat is an assistant professor in the MFA program at Queens College. He is the recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as well as a St. Botolph Society poetry grant. He is the author of Dear Regime, and his verse has appeared in such journals as New England Review, Atlanta Review, and Poet Lore.
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More About the Author
Roger Sedarat is the author of Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic, which won Ohio University Press's Hollis Summers' Prize, and Ghazal Games (Ohio UP, 2011). In addition to teaching creative writing (poetry and literary translation) in the MFA program at Queens College, City University of New York, he teaches and writes on such academic interests as 19th and 20th century American literature as well as Middle Eastern-American literature. Currently, Roger is working toward translating a full-length collection of ghazals by the 14th century Sufi Persian poet, Hafez.
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Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a fun read.
In these poems, Roger Sedarat is funny, clever, sometimes poignant, and frequently entertainingly caustic. He twists the ghazal form around for the fun of it. and says things about life and memory. The poems seem effortlessly tossed off, and yet they can't be (can they)?
Anyone (not just poemheads) can read this without feeling poetrified.
Read it. Now.
In these poems, Roger Sedarat is funny, clever, sometimes poignant, and frequently entertainingly caustic. He twists the ghazal form around for the fun of it. and says things about life and memory. The poems seem effortlessly tossed off, and yet they can't be (can they)?
Anyone (not just poemheads) can read this without feeling poetrified.
Read it. Now.
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