Rococo and Other Worlds: Selected Poems (The Driftless Series & Wesleyan Film Series) - Hardcover

Syed, Afzal Ahmed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081956933X ISBN 13: 9780819569332

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Afzal Ahmed Syed holds a unique place among contemporary poets of the Urdu language, as an acknowledged master of both the classical and modern Urdu poetic forms. The poems in Rococo and Other Worlds explore the mythology and historical realities of South Asia and the Middle East; their bold imagery creates narratives of voluptuous perfection, which remain inseparable from the political realities that Syed witnessed as a young observer of the violent separation of East Pakistan and emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 and of the Lebanese civil war in 1976. Musharraf Ali Farooqi's sensitive translations bring this extraordinary work to English readers for the first time.

About this title

About the Author:

AFZAL AHMED SYED is the author of numerous volumes of poetry and translations of Western literature into Urdu, including works by Gabriel García Márquez and Jean Genet. He is credited with infusing Urdu nazm poetry with a new idiom and imagery. MUSHARRAF ALI FAROOQI is an author, novelist, and translator. His books include translations of the Urdu classics The Adventures of Amir Hamza (2007) and Hoshruba (2009), and a novel, The Story of a Widow (2008).

Review:

"A powerful narrative of human solitude and alienation, the gentle and at times explosive rhythms of Rococo and Other Worlds linger in the mind long after the poems are read and contemplated. A modern sensibility profoundly informed by the finest liberal traditions of classical Urdu poetry at its best."―Muhammad Umar Memon, professor Urdu and Persian literature and Islamic studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"Rococo usually refers to baroque style, playful and elaborate rhythms and ornament, but other worlds also leap and scream from these poems―images of violent history as Tacitus, Goya, or Kafka saw it. A sense of danger pervades a desperate and eroticized human search for safety. It's a dark vision, near surrealist, painfully unique."―David Ray, author of Sam's Book and After Tagore

About this edition

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 081956933X
• ISBN 13: 9780819569332
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 108