Poetry is one of the oldest enduring forms of writing, but remains mysterious and inaccessible for the average person. Even though we all write daily, sending emails, texts, posting on social media, most of us would laugh if you suggest we read, or even write, a poem. What sets poetry apart is the universality of the form; when you read a poem, the emotions and images are things anyone can relate to or imagine. A poem doesn’t need to rhyme or look a certain way. It doesn’t need to be about grandiose figures or images. There are poets of all subjects and in all countries. Included below are three lesser known but remarkable poems by three authors hailing from Iran, Jamaica, and the U.S.
Conquest of the Garden(excerpt) by Forough Farrokhzad
Forough Farrokhzad (December 29, 1934 – February 13, 1967) was an influential Iranian poet and film director. She was a controversial modernist poet and an iconoclast, writing from a female point of view.Farrokhzad's strong feminine voice became the focus of much negative attention and open disapproval, both during her lifetime and in posthumous reception of her work.
In a radio interview, when asked about the feminine perspective in her poems, Farrokhzad replied: "If my poems, as you say, have an aspect of femininity, it is of course quite natural. After all, fortunately I am a woman. But if you speak of artistic merits, I think gender cannot play a role. In fact to even voice such a suggestion is unethical. It is natural that a woman, because of her physical, emotional, and spiritual inclinations, may give certain issues greater attention, issues that men may not normally address. I believe that if those who choose art to express their inner self, feel they have to do so with their gender in mind, they would never progress in their art -- and that is not right. So when I write, if I keep thinking, oh I'm a woman and I must address feminine issues rather than human issues, then that is a kind of stopping and self-destruction. Because what matters, is to cultivate and nourish one's own positive characteristics until one reaches a level worth of being a human. What is important is the work produced by a human being and not one labeled as a man or a woman. When a poem reaches a certain level of maturation, it separates itself from its creator and connects to a world where it is valid based on its own merits."
That crow which flew over our heads
and descended into the disturbed thought
of a vagabond cloud
and the sound of which traversed
he breadth of the horizon
like a short spear
will carry the news of us to the city.
Everyone knows,
everyone knows
that you and I have seen the garden
from that cold sullen window
and that we have plucked the apple
from that playful, hard-to-reach branch.
Black Space (excerpt) by Ishion Hutchinson
Ishion Hutchinson (August 22, 1983 --) is a Jamaican poet and essayist.Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He received a BA from the University of the West Indies, an MFA from New York University, and completed graduate studies at the University of Utah.
His poetry and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Review (UK), Narrative, New Letters, Granta, Gulf Coast, The Huffington Post, The Wolf (UK), Prairie Schooner, Attica, Caribbean Review of Books, and the LA Review. He currently teaches courses in poetry and creative writing at Cornell University and serves as contributing editor to the literary journal, Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art.
I can bring a halo
into the night cave, quiet
with music (do not ask the music),
to her shaded there
in the moon; her fine spectacles
steam their pond rings;
her animal eyes fix
on the lintel of the door
as the wax owl glances back at me. I am her little cotton
tree the breeze combs
white into a final note,
her diminuendo poco a poco ...
Women who Sleep on Stones (excerpt) by Lucia Perillo
Lucia Perillo(September 30, 1958 – October 16, 2016) was an American poet. In 2000, Perillo was recognized with a "genius grant" as part
of the MacArthur Fellows Program. Perillo was born in Manhattan on September 30, 1958 and grew up in Irvington, in the suburbs of New York City in the 1960s. She graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1979 with a major in wildlife management, and subsequently worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She completed her M.A. in English at Syracuse University, while working seasonally at Mount Rainier National Park, and moved to Olympia, Washington in 1987, where she taught at Saint Martin's College. For most of the 1990s, Perillo taught in the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University.
Women who sleep on stones are like
brick houses that squat alone in cornfields.
They look weatherworn, solid, dusty,
torn screens sloughing from the window frames.
But at dusk a second-story light is always burning.
Used to be I loved nothing more
than spreading my blanket on high granite ledges
that collect good water in their hollows.
Stars came close without the trees
staring and rustling like damp underthings.