“There's something narcissistic in the phrase "collected poems." Who's collecting them? The poem. How hard is that? That's not a real collection. Now if he had made a collection of water fountains, or of oven mitts, that would be a collection. Or if he'd collected editions of Festus, the long mad poem written somewhere in the nineteenth century by a lost soul named Bailey--that would be an achievement. But collecting your own poems? What's so great about that? And mixing and mingling them in with some new? New and and Collected Poems? Oh, well! Good job. Nice going.”
“So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain. Before they meant something specific, they had a shape and a way of being said. And now, yes, gloom and broom are floating fifty miles away from each other in you mind because they refer to different notions, but they're cheek-by-jowl as far as your tongue is concerned. And that's what a poem does. Poems match sounds up the way you matched them when you were a tiny kid, using that detachable front phoneme. ”
“And I'll flip through the newest issue, walking back from my blue mailbox, hunting for the poem he chose over mine, and it'll be the same thing as always. The prose will have pulled back, and the poem will be there, cavorting, saying, I'm a poem, I'm a poem. No, you're not! You're an impostor, you're a toy train of pretend stanzas of chopped garbage. Just like my poem was.”
“You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.”
“I have put my arm down forever to interrupt the men who want more hair."from the poem "Pasadena" collected in Own Face (1978)”
“Normal people have rock collections, shell collections, key ring collections and stamp collections. (The Captain had even known somebody with a letterbox collection.) But a people collection? That had to be the most bizarre one he'd come across. Not to mention the most unethical.”
“Azita Ghahreman, is an Iranian poet.[1] She was born in Iran in 1962. She has written four books in Persian and one book in Swedish. She has also translated American poetry. She is a member of the Iranian Writers Association and International PEN.She has published four collections of poetry: Eve's Songs (1983), Sculptures of Autumn (1986), Forgetfulness is a Simple Ritual (1992) and The Suburb of Crows (2008), a collection reflecting on he exile in Sweden (she lives in an area called oxie on the outskirts of Malmö) that was published in both Swedish and Persian.Her poems directly address questions of female desire and challenge the accepted position of women.A collection of Azita's work was published in Swedish in 2009 alongside the work of Sohrab Rahimi and Christine Carlson. She has also translated a collection of poems by the American poet and cartoonist, Shel Silverstein, into Persian, The Place Where the Sidewalk Ends (2000). And she has edited three volumes of poems by poets from Khorasan, the eastern province of Iran that borders Afghanistan and which has a rich and distinctive history.Azita's poems have been translated into German, Dutch, Arabic, Chinese, Swedish, Spanish, Macedonian, Turkish, Danish, French and English. A new book of poetry, Under Hypnosis in Dr Caligari's Cabinet was published in Sweden in April 2012.[edit]BooksEva's Songs, (persian)1990Autumn Sculptures,(persian) 1995Where the sidewalk ends, Shell Silverstein(Translated to Persian with Morteza Behravan) 2000The Forgetfulness has a Simple Ceremony,(persian) 2002Here is the Suburb of Crows,(persian) 2009four Poetry books ( collected poems 1990-2009 in Swedish), 2009under hypnosis in Dr kaligaris Cabinet, (Swedish) 2012Poetry Translation Center London( collected poems in English) 2012”