Cover Image: Lean Against This Late Hour

Lean Against This Late Hour

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

This collection was stunning, one of the ONLY books I have been able to read and finish while in quarantine. My mind's been so distracted lately but this collection was just so captivating and beautiful—even while handling difficult subjects of war and violence—that I couldn't help but gobble it up. Truly a balm for our times!

Was this review helpful?

Moving, fascinating poems. This is a poet who has lost too much to war to ever want to see it again. Images of bullets, missed connections, stopped machinery, choppy seas, and brothers abound, and the overall feeling is of death and loss. Powerful, and not what I expected from an Iranian poet (although on consideration I'm not sure what I expected).

The publisher has also put the Farsi text before the English, and while I didn't get a whole lot out of that it was still interesting to see the way the structure of the poems looked different in different languages.

Was this review helpful?

This is a very unusual poetry book. It is written in both Farsi and English. The themes are both universal and on a more personal level. The imagery is very strong and at times reminded me of some of Khalil Gibran's more sparse and succinct poems. I would like to read more from this poet.

Was this review helpful?

This collection is absolutely gorgeous. The poetry is at once sensuous and very thought provoking, full of juxtapositions and contradictions. There is an air of melancholy with little hints of beauty throughout. I love the way the poet compares and contrasts the natural world to the man-made one in a lot of ways, from bees flying over fields of landmines, to birds so accustomed to nesting on wires, that they no longer nest on trees. The poems contain a hint of the complexities of self and identity, and the way we relate to others, yet remain apart. The martial imagery is also very well-used and affecting, without being too much.
This collection also has a very unusual sense of time, where memory is stacked on top of memory on top of present reality, where multiple possibilities inhabit a single space. It's breathtaking and brilliant.

I'd recommend this to anyone who loves imagery rich poetry that appeals to the senses, the mind, and the heart.

Was this review helpful?