what they say

about Sholeh Wolpé

“Wolpé’s concise, unflinching, and often wry free verse explores violence, culture, and gender.”
—Poetry Foundation

“A gifted Iranian-American poet beautifully explores love and the loss of love, beauty and war and the ghosts of the past.”
—Shelf Awareness Magazine

“Sholeh Wolpé Transforms Church into Spiritual Nest.” 
— Theatrius

“Wolpé’s beautiful poems are at once sensual, meditative, raw in their honesty, and judicious in their fit use of language.”
—Kwame Daws, poet and critic, University of Nebraska

“In this beautiful rendering of Attar's Conference of the Birds, Sholeh Wolpe, herself a passionate poet, transports us to another time, another language & another world, while reminding us of how enduring & universal great works of imagination are, how they create spaces within which we not only acknowledge and appreciate our differences but also recognize & celebrate our shared humanity. Only a true poet could achieve such a feat.”  
—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Attar’s grand allegory for the journey of the soul as it seeks union with the divine has influenced countless artists, poets, mystics, and believers around the world. But never before has it been rendered in English with such beauty, elegance, and precision. Wolpé’s translation of this epic is sure to be as timeless as the masterpiece itself.”
—Reza Aslan, author of Zealot

“Through her translations of Iranian writers, and through four collections of her own poetry, Wolpé seeks to bridge the fierce political divide between her native Iran and her adopted Western homes—to pierce their mutual ignorance, and reveal one to the other.”
—Guernica, a magazine of global arts & politics

“Sholeh Wolpé provides generous service in showing readers the different ways that poets commit to their own voices as they call out The Deadly Silencer, sounding off in a world that does not listen, indifferent to their commitment.”
—The Huffington Post

“Sholeh Wolpé’s poems are political, satirical, and unflinching in the face of war, tyranny and loss. Talismanic and alchemical, they attempt to transmute experience into the magic of the imagined. But they also dare to be tender and funny lyrical moments.”
—Chris Abani, novelist, Northwestern University

“In a world where cultures and religions are recklessly facing off, Sholeh Wolpé writes careful poems that cast a light on some of what we all hold in common.”
—Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003)

“I was struck by this accomplished translation, which moves the reader along from one stanza to the next in strong, compelling rhythms. I think what Sholeh Wolpé has done exceedingly well is to bring this medieval poem over into lively, contemporary English that feels absolutely right and not at all forced.”
— Edith Grossman, author of Why Translation Matters

“In Sholeh Wolpé’s version, this sly, knowing Sufi classic will surprise and delight a new generation of readers.”
—Jack Miles, general editor of The Norton Anthology of World Religions

“La poesía de Sholeh Wolpé no trata de encontrar el exilio, la feminidad y la rebeldía vía los conceptos. Los ve en el espacio sin nombre del cuerpo: en los olores, los colores y las voces. Y por eso, aun muy particular, es universal.”
—Mohsen Emadi, Periódico de Poesía

“Sholeh Wolpé, a poet and artist in her own right, Iranian-born and cosmopolitan, is a daughter of the freedom made possible by poets like Farrokhzad.  Her translations are hypnotic in their beauty and force.”
—Alicia Ostriker, poet, critic,  Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets

“Wolpe’s poems are at once humorous, sad and sexy, which is to say that they are capriciously human, human even in that they dream of wings and are always threatening to take flight.”
—Tony Barnstone, poet, Whittier College

“Sholeh Wolpé's poetry proves to be rumination, prayer, song.”
—Nathalie Handal, poet, Columbia University

“Her righteous aversion to male oppression is as broad as the span from Tehran to LA, as deep as a wise woman’s heart.”
—Richard Katrovas, Poet, novelist, Western Michigan University

“Sholeh Wolpé’s poems confirm the positive reaction that I have had to her work–the irrepressible originality, the insouciant wit, the occasional stabs of pain, the fearless honesty, the instant evocation of a time and a place are all here in an enjoyable and endearing mix.”
—Amin Banani, Professor Emeritus of Persian and History, UCLA

“As close to the original a reader can come in translation, and imbued with the same kind of revelation, it makes clear why Attar remained such a strong influence on Rumi. The reader travels, along with the poet’s birds, to greater spiritual insight through transcendent verse.” 
— Roger Sedarat, Queens College

"A rollicking, delving quest of a poem, an extended riff on what it means to live with art that is not shy of the mundane even as it lifts us up with images and phrases of transcendental thinking."
—Fred D’Aguiar  (Poetry Foundation May 2017 Reading List)

“Wolpé offers Attar’s masterwork not as a curiosity from a bygone age, but as a text of living wisdom whose message is always timely."  
—Fred McComb, Literary Hub

“One of Sholeh Wolpé ’s strengths as a translator is that she is also a poet with a fine ear for English and she brings her feeling for language into her translations.”
— Peter Constantine, in an interview in The Center For Fiction

“Sholeh Wolpé’s exquisite poetic voice and her superb command of the art of translation meld together in translations that exude passion, defiance, and crackling wit.”
—Nasrin Rahimieh, former director University of California, Irvine  Center for Persian Studies

“Wolpé, who has translated twelfth-century Persian poet Attar’s TheConference of the Birds into English and Whitman’s Song of Myselfinto Persian, is an exacting and elegant translator. Her sensitivity to Persian-English differences and understanding of themes of exile, belonging and uprooting – all pertinent to translating and understanding Forugh – come from her own itinerant life. Born in Iran, she moved first to the Caribbean, then the UK, before settling in the US. Wolpé states that she thus ‘arrived at English language not once, but three times.’”
—Darius Sepehri, Sydney Review of Books

“La traducción es una parte inseparable del oficio poético de Sholeh Wolpé. En inglés, Wolpé excava tres dimensiones de su vida por la traducción y profundiza en ellas: el exilio, la feminidad y el misticismo. El misticismo, que en sí es una experiencia poética, juega un papel importante en la historia del pensamiento, afrontando el monopolio de lo divino. Ilhan Berk escribió: solo los poetas tienen una infancia más larga. Es decir, Wolpé, cuando traduce un poema, traduce su infancia en lengua persa a su infancia poética en lengua inglesa. Hace la traducción de una infancia a otra, de un asombro a otro. Sin embargo, entre estos dos entornos de la subjetividad, vive el abismo. El abismo entre ‘yo’ y ‘yo’ es el mismo abismo donde reside el motor de la subjetividad poética.”
—Mohsen Emadi, poet

“Wolpé distinguishes well between the empathy of literature and ‘religious and ideological fanaticism.’   And I hope she is right for the entire world that in Iran literature is like rain.”
—Dr. James Richard Bennet, founder of the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology

“Iranian American poet-translator Sholeh Wolpé achieved a major coup earlier in 2017 when she brought out The Conference of the Birds, her translated poems by the 12th-century poet Farīd Ud-Dīn Attar, a revered Persian bard who was rumored to have met and inspired the young Rumi and who wrote more than 4,000 couplets for The Conference of the Birds alone.”
—Jordan Elgrably, The Markaz