Interview with Abbas Safari; Writing Romantic Poetry is One of the Most Difficult Tasks

Abbas Safari is a poet who has broken the norms surrounding him in two ways. First, despite the very late publication of his poetry collections from mid-life onwards, he quickly became recognized, read, and beloved among poetry enthusiasts, receiving multiple awards. Second, despite living abroad for over forty years, he has neither ceased writing nor failed to influence the poetry of the younger generation inside Iran. He has reached a language and mindset in his poetry that resonates with today's generation, which is distanced from him both in age and geography. This is a fortune not every poet enjoys. His books have also received various poetry awards. The latest poetry award he received was the Journalists' Poetry Award and the Book of the Year statue in Iran, awarded by a group of literary journalists for his recent poetry collection "Like Ink in Water." I invited Abbas Safari to be my guest this week on the book review program. The conversation contains many interesting insights, much like his poetry. But here, first and foremost, we hear the poet's voice in his poem: "My mute spies, the little sparrows that followed your trace yesterday from tree to tree and street to street, God knows what they have seen that their chirping has ceased. Get up, lazy one, when you are always late and rush out the door, I roll from one side to the other among the sheets still scented with you, imagining the red sentence you should have written on the bathroom mirror... The mention of the last night, that night I turned into a new and rare bird-human with a gesture of repentance, and you, resting your head on my chest, were the last heartbroken fairy of the sea, who was playing with a piece of pure cotton moon with pale, damp fingers, and your black curl resting on the corner of your forehead and your playful eyes were reminiscent of the silent cinema stars, and I, like a bird that had hit its head against a glass wall, had lost my mind. When I regained consciousness, you were gone... The moon in the twilight remained like a dim light above the entrance of a notorious house in Bangkok, the sky was so gloomy that it seemed a depressed angel had hanged itself in one of its dark corners. When I stepped out of the house, I did not know where I would go aimlessly, and your lingering name would cry like a flower in my throat. Mr. Safari, welcome to this week's "Close-Up, Close-Up" program. Regarding the specifics of your poetry, especially in the five collections you have published in Iran, there are two issues: one is the matter of language and the other is the tone. Your poetry language is fresh and vibrant, and your tone is humble and sincere, which seems to stem from your strong and sometimes deliberate relationship with everyday spoken language. For instance, when you say: "Time has never pulled the handbrake for any tethered being." Do you have a specific analysis for these two features, or has it been entirely spontaneous? In response to your question, which focused more on the role of language in these collections, I must say that my poetry language has gone through various stages. What you mentioned may be true for the last three or four collections I published in Iran. It is indeed as you have perceived, a simple and everyday language at the level of daily conversation. Now, how I reached this language, whether it was deliberate or not, and what paths I traversed to reach this point is a somewhat elaborate discussion that I will try to summarize. Before the collection "Wet Matches" and my first collection titled "Old Camera," which was published in Iran, I had published two other collections abroad, which had a language somewhat similar to the semi-elevated language of free verse poetry that was very popular among poetry readers, and most of my contemporaries had adapted themselves to that language. However, perhaps life, my studies, my emotions, and my overall existential outlook reached a point in middle age where I wanted to express heartfelt thoughts without any pretense or embellishment. This motivation led me to study more seriously the models of this language. In Persian, apart from Forough Farrokhzad, we had no other model. Even Forough used this language very little. Thus, through studying Western poetry and my daily and persistent work, which did not happen suddenly, I was able to reach such a language and discover its possibilities. When I discovered its possibilities, and of course, I still cannot claim to have discovered all those possibilities, I reached a stage that was astonishing to me, revealing what a panorama and vast world this conversational language can convey to the reader and what opportunities it provides for the poet. An interesting event occurred in your poetry where you had been silent for years. I mean, you were completely silent for the first seventeen years and did not write poetry, and then your first collection "Old Camera" was published in 2002, right after the 1990s when the issue of language had created significant constraints for poetry and poets in Iran. At that time, the focus had shifted to constructing and devaluing other poetic elements in favor of highlighting the linguistic aspect of poetry, meaning technique and artifice took precedence. However, in the following decade, it led to a neglect where almost all linguistic techniques were discarded, and any prose could find its way into published books under the name of poetry, which unfortunately still continues in part of our poetry. Your poetry, while distancing itself from the poetry of the 1990s, which focused heavily on technique and language, does not resort to simplistic poetry either. At the same time, it utilizes some achievements of the 1990s but remains entirely independent poetry. I want to ask how much you were influenced by the poetic movements inside Iran and how much by the poetry you read in English? One of the most difficult tasks in any language is writing romantic poetry. Because it is a realm where every corner has been discovered and expressed. As Octavio Paz said, if you examine the entire history of world poetry, it is either about love or death. To answer your question honestly, I must say that I was not indifferent to the events that occurred in the 1990s in Iran. These events somewhat suddenly opened my eyes to realize that what existed in the past in Iran, with which we had a relationship and loved, like the poetry of Shamlu, although their status remains strong, the younger generation, due to their experiences like war and revolution, needs a different expression and language. In fact, this generation looks at issues from a completely different perspective than my generation and the generation before me. This was a warning for me that something needed to be done. But this generation, as I have said before, unfortunately, was heavily influenced by the ideas of postmodernists. These ideas were like a double-edged sword that benefited them in some ways and harmed them in others. For this reason, most of the material they were influenced by was philosophical. A sample of postmodern poetry had not been published in Iran for them to see what postmodern poetry really meant. This led to most of their performance being based on guesswork. Years later, I translated examples like Brautigan and Bukowski or Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" into Persian for the first time, which was published in the magazine "Negah-e No"; all of these have conversational language that is much simpler than the conversational language that I and my contemporaries use in Iran. Unfortunately, our friends in Iran in the 1990s managed to access what is considered postmodern poetry. Therefore, most of them gravitated towards one of the schools of postmodern poetry, which was New York language poetry that is not very incomprehensible. About ten to twelve schools fall under the umbrella of postmodernism. You can easily relate to Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery. But I do not know how this type of language poetry emerged in Iran. Perhaps it was a linguistic mockery of the prevailing situation or regime. In any case, it only showed a form of linguistic protest. So how does this theme manifest in your poetry? Is the type of language you choose inspired by postmodernists who use language in its simple form, like the examples you translated and published a few years ago in Negah-e No? Was your poetry influenced by these, or did you feel the need for this type of simpler and undistorted language and tone? I can mention the necessity of changes. The events that occurred in Iran in the realm of poetry and also larger global issues like the collapse of the Soviet Union, which marked the end of the idealism my generation was involved in, were both alarms, a notification that we had entered another phase that demanded its own language. I took this from both global issues and Iran and the type of work that was being published in that period in magazines; however, for my poetry, I could not draw significant influence from anyone in Iran. The person whose work I followed seriously and am glad he finally succeeded was Ali Baba Chahi, and his method of work was not something I wanted to pursue, and he is more aligned with that New York section I mentioned. My inclination was more towards poetry like Brautigan and Bukowski. Undoubtedly, my translations of their works opened my eyes to their world, and thus it cannot be without influence on the challenging task of simplifying the Persian language, which was difficult because in Persian we break words; when we break a word, it loses its grandeur. Therefore, despite all the difficulties and differences, I still cannot say that I have not learned or been influenced by them. Before we delve into what you have been influenced by, let’s return to your poetry and the collection "Like Ink in Water," which recently received an award in Iran. Apart from form and the issues of language and tone, what stands out in Abbas Safari's poetry thematically is the romanticism of his poetry, a romanticism expressed by a man who is grateful for this type of love. This kind of feeling you present in your poetry is captivating. It seems you are constantly enjoying your romantic experiences and love affairs, and this lyricism, this gratitude, this enjoyment, and this union are reflected in your poetry. Regarding romantic poems, I must say that I have written less of traditional romantic poetry. Such poems are more prevalent in my earlier collections than in my recent ones. But I can confidently say that from a reader's perspective, love exists in about sixty to seventy percent of these poems, even when the subject of the poem is not romantic. This emotional vein runs through these poems; even if a poem is about the disappearance of factories in Ohio, suddenly, because my wife is from that area, you see that an emotional vein runs through it. If you want to write romantic poetry, it must be somewhat realistic. If it is not to be realistic and you just sit down to write a romantic poem like "On a moonlit night, I passed through an alley, and you are no longer there" while you are probably married and have children and are a happy person, then it is mere poetry-making. My inclination towards this type of poetry stems from my upbringing and emotions and feelings, and love has certainly held a significant place in my mind and psyche. But writing romantic poetry is one of the most challenging tasks in any language. Because it is a realm where every corner has been discovered and expressed. As Octavio Paz said, if you examine the entire history of world poetry, it is either about love or death. That is why it is very difficult to write a romantic poem that is not repetitive. But fortunately, I managed to enter a realm that has been less explored, meaning I moved away from the complete, ethereal, and flawless woman. This issue helped me. I reached a woman who can be your wife, who can be nagging and make noise, who might burp at the dinner table, but she is a woman you love, and even from these matters, you can create a romantic poem. This was a stage that we did not see even in Shamlu's poetry until the revolution because Aida in Shamlu's poetry is a truly complete and flawless woman. My effort has been this. Another feature of this romanticism seen in your poetry is that there is less separation poetry in your collections. Most of it is about union. Is this love lived, meaning your lived experiences, or is the sorrow of separation in your life a result of this poetic imagination? Or have you lowered your expectations from the subject of love?