POETRY

Dear "IRANdokht"

Thank you so much for your kind feedback. I totaly agree with your view. And yes, Nazy's Review was remarkable.

We all have so much to learn from each other, if only we look at every work in its entirety and specific context.

- Azadeh

Guerrilla Movements

It's a shame how these terrorist organizations were able to recruit young men and women, play with their emotions and transform them into terrorists back then. My heart aches when I think of these pure young Iranians who lost their lives for some bloodthirsty, undemocratic and sectarian movements. How could these young Iranians believe that their leaders wanted to establish a democracy in Iran while their adored Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot & Co.?

victim

If you had read it right, you would have agreed with that sentiment too. Who wouldn't want to bring back time and talk to them as a wise friend and persuade them to change their ways?

Did you enjoy being a victim so much that you wouldn't want to talk sense into them if given the chance?

read again before you attack please!

What I read in this part isn't just your wish to reverse time to
bring your friend back to life to a young Azadeh, her friend. I read
your wish to bring your young friend back to you, the mature and
knowing Azadeh, to give her advice and to ask her all the right
questions somebody should have asked her then, sending her off to
continuation of her life with more wisdom and self-preservation.

That wish sits on the collective memory and hearts of our nation today.

IRANdokht

To all one-way sentimentalists

"That wish sits on the collective memory and hearts of our nation today."

These were the ending words of Ms Kaviani's comment. Such generalizations may sound emotively appealing but in reality are only rhetorics. It also shows how detached you are from those whom you describe as "our nation".

Does this "nation" of yours include the victims of the terror Mehrnoush and her comrades were inflicting upon them?

Young and immature

Loss of life is always hard,especially when the person is a young educated Iranian woman,but like Azadeh said they were young and immature.When people are young they think that they can change a regime especially with a group of them get together.We have seen that with Fadaees in Siahkal which ended with many of them losing their lives.

beautiful sentiments

beautiful sentiments expressed eloquently...

It doesn't matter how wrong we now think they were. These young men and women believed in their fights due to the circumstances forced upon them. They were brave and they were idealistic, they were taken to the wrong path due to the oppression and political obscurity of their time. We have all mourned the loss of our courageous but naive friends, the sentiments you spoke of are too familiar and painful. I loved Nazy's comment too, her analysis of your work is great.

Your wise friends are right, do not even change a comma! 

Thank you for sharing your feelings.

IRANdokht

Thank you

Dearest Nazy & Orang: Thank you very much for your eloquent and educational comments.

I'd also like to thank "Honest Fan, "Sensitive Critic", "Kurush", "Setareh", "Opra", "Anonymous – 26", "Anonymousvenice", and "Mr. Correct"  for your feedbacks.

- Azadeh

Truly Amazed

Lady, you had your loss and so did we.

Because of the misdeeds of punks like your friend and misjudgments of "Pseudo-intellectuals" like yourself, we lost our country and 2 generations (so far) have gone to DUST!

Quit these stupid games ... The Fadaie movement and the so called Student's Confederation abroad were both Foreign Sponsored Entities.

30 years of misery, 30 years of loss is enough!

Pasheemaanam

Eshtebaahast... eshtebaahast... eshtebaah

Woven with the yarn of loss

When we live a full life, full of people and places and triumphs and failures, even if we would never attempt to write anything, chances are we have some interesting stories to tell. Someday we might tell those stories in an animated fashion to a circle of friends or family, or to bigger audiences who might find us and our stories interesting.

There are, however, some tales of sadness and of personal loss, things too difficult to recount and tell, which never find their way into the realm of things we share with others. Keeping them to ourselves does not mean that the stories lose their boldness or importance to us; some tales of grief and loss only become bolder and more poignant, gaining color and intensity with time, for our accumulated knowledge and experience keeps taking those stories and memories, polishing them and putting them into their proper perspective and context.

Your rememberance of your college friend seems to be just such a story. A memory woven with the yarn of sadness and loss, grief and questions unanswered at first and then very slowly and incrementally addressed in your mind; until it felt sufficiently ordered for it to come out and find itself on a medium other than your thought.

When a long-held tale of grief, or any other deep emotion for that matter, attempts to manifest itself into written word, in my very limited and humble experience, it does not wish to follow any format. The urgency and importance of the story, the memory, the sentiment itself is so great that it would not wait to be textured and organized and prioritized. It flows out for it has no other choice. That urgency itself is a reason why such stories always find their ways to our hearts.

In reading your tale of grief over the loss of your friend, and in Mehrnoush's appearing as a representative for many other young idealists such as her throughout the contempoary Iranian history, I could feel the urgency and importance of the tale you needed to tell.

Your tribute to your friend is beautiful, touching, and wise. Reading it, I could relate to the way your current day wisdom and experience was weaving itself through what little you knew then about your friend and her ideals and her activities, finally trying to make sense of it after all these years.

I am not a literature expert, so I don't know much about structures and forms of poetry. I can only relate to what I read on a very emotional level. Even if I were a literature expert, I doubt I would abandon connecting to a piece of writing, to get busy evaluating its form and format. I read this piece with my heart just the way it was written, by an aching and loving heart.

I loved the stanza which reads:

On the anniversary of your death,
I lay on your eyelids my hand's spell
and watch time reverse itself, life
flow back into you and you, lifting
out of the oblivion, fly backwards,
like a tumbler pigeon, onto the alley
where the alphabet of your landscape ended.

What I read in this part isn't just your wish to reverse time to bring your friend back to life to a young Azadeh, her friend. I read your wish to bring your young friend back to you, the mature and knowing Azadeh, to give her advice and to ask her all the right questions somebody should have asked her then, sending her off to continuation of her life with more wisdom and self-preservation.

That wish sits on the collective memory and hearts of our nation today.

Beautiful

Don’t touch it!

When something comes from heart will go directly to heart and you call it a poem. It is created with his soul and body, beauty and imperfection like a human being you cannot change it.

You don't do a poem for money as Cyrano said : Impossible, Monsieur; mon sang se coagule / En pensant qu'on y peut changer une virgule

Azadeh you should send this

Azadeh this poem was beautiful i strongly suggest you send it in for the National Poetry competition the closing date is 31st October and 1st prize is £5000 ($10,000)

azadeh

This is a precious piece that you have written, but I must say that the commentators that have left earlier suggestions have a point.

I believe that it would perthaps be a good idea to rewrite the piece in a prose format, and republish it. For some reason, the present format does not do the work much justice.

I don't get the effect that I should when I read such a piece. Hope you consider it

Best

Yaadash geraami baad

Thank you for this beautiful piece. Yaade Mehrnoush Ebrahimi and all those who lost their precious life for freedom geraami baad. They make us proud for having such brave people who were willing to give their life for the greater cause and at the same time make us ashamed for allowing such a brutal regime rulling our people for nearly 30 years.

Youth's insensitivity

Dear manesh,

We were young, insensitive and stupid; and I have simply expressed the *truth* of this aspect of our lives. I certainly do not expect *you* to feel *my* loss if you cannot understand that many people are immature and self-centred when young.

Azadeh

An 'A' for effort, but ...

I would have written it slightly differently. I believe that it would look much better if you changed the format into just prose

The way it is, is neither here nor there

Azadeh

Although this is a personal work for you with the attachments involved, nevertheless I tend to agree with what manesh has brought up regarding a lack of sensitivity.

You approach was rather a cavalier one. It's not always all or nothing. To give legitimacy to your grief and loss, you have to acknowledge others also.

In memory of Akbar agha!

Akbar agha was somebody's father, son or husband.  I didn't get what was so funny about cutting "it" up.  And you expect me to feel for YOUR loss?

Hi Azadeh

It's been a while since I e-mailed you. Hope all is well NICE WORK .....If I can give you ONE SUGGESTION: Your Verses are just a bit too long .... Other than that, IMPRESSED .. E-Mail Me if you get a Chance BYE

Azadeh Azad: The Ambush

Touching stanzas on being nothing. Recalls Holderlin's recurring motif 'the blessed':

With my own kind I lived and could grow for a day that was fleeting,
One by one they depart, gone from me into their sleep.
Yet you sleepers within me are wakeful, and in my related soul an image of each, fugitive, lingers and rests.
And more living there you live on where the god-given spirit's
Joy rejuvenates all, all who have aged, and the dead.
(The Departed/Holderlin)

Dear Azadeh

This is a touching piece, but I wouldn't exactly call it a 'poem'.

The structure of the piece does not lend itself to either 'traditional' Modern poetry, or even some type of a 'prose poem'. I thought that perhaps it's some type of a 'Post Modern' piece, but I believe that it resembles more a hybrid between a 'regular prose' and 'prose poem'.

I don't know whether you categorized it as 'Poetry', as it says above, or Jahanshah just chose that for you. Nevertheless, a nice effort :)

Beautifully written

What else can I say?
No more sacrificing precious life for any cause.