Rebirth: Poems

Foroogh Farrokhzaad (1935-67) is the leading feminist of Iran of this century and the greatest Persian poetess of modern style. A Rebirth [Tavallodi Digar] is a collection of a woman’s new identity as “woman as lover” rather that “woman as domestic” in Iran. Of course, as lover, she was also an explorer. Thus Foroogh falls into the tradition of poet as explorer well exemplified by the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Gerard de Nerval. Her significance is in her exploratory capacity for love and life as an independent woman. A Rebirth represents a breakthrough in woman’s writing in Iran; female eroticism and passion are explored in a context of the traditional female seclusion in household activities, finally breaking free from those bounds and bonds. In the appended poem, “Lets Bring Faith to the Onset of the Cold Season,” in her lament for a dead lover she is said to have predicted her own death from a traffic accident—at the untimely age of thirty-two. Foroogh’s poetry