Lean Against This Late Hour

Penguin Poets

De: Garous Abdolmalekian, Idra Novey - translator, Ahmad Nadalizadeh - translator

Narrado por: Sean Rohani

Duración: 45 m

Resumen del Editor

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 listeners 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."

©2020 Garous Abdolmalekian (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Abdolmalekian deftly weaves together philosophical questions, memorable allegories, and immensely lyrical images with emotional honesty and depth. Yet his poetry is also entirely modern in structure and content, which is a credit to the translators, as well as to the strength and beauty of his natural tone and voice. [He] is a poet of our interconnected, transnational time—this era of citizen against government, of surveillance and mistrust, of loss, despair, and yet somehow, always: of hope and love . . . Abdolmalekian is a necessary voice in the world poetry canon.”—Asymptote 

“A major triumph not only because of the beauty and power of the language . . . but also because of the poet’s refusal to surrender subjective experience in the face of overwhelming historical circumstance . . . Abdolmalekian’s extraordinary capacity for empathy is equal to, and may be the source of, his dazzling imagination . . . Given the political tensions on the world stage and the rise in xenophobia in the United States in the past few years, the powerful voice of this extraordinary poet is perhaps more necessary now than ever.”—Michigan Quarterly Review

“Abdolmalekian’s voice resists facile autobiographical readings, despite—or perhaps because—his words often sound like expressions of real, lived experiences . . . poetic translation alongside the original text offers those who can enjoy both languages a rich reading experience.”—World Literature Today