Description
Book SynopsisThe poems, arranged chronologically, give an impressionistic account of the poet as an immigrant, in quest of her inner voice and her core self, in the new land. They reveal intense isolation, despite engagement with the so-called political, religious, and cultural disparities between the two countries. The poems tell the story of how the speaker comes closer to her roots by leaving her country behind. They reveal her concern about the Middle East; the negative associations with her country, Iran; her preoccupation with the possibility of reconciliation between the three Abrahamic religions; her concerns about her family back home, and her newly found friends and lover. For the persona in these poems, the political is personal.
Trade Review"Bänoo Zans Songs of Exile are spare, powerful poems of longing for (re)union with the Beloved, reaching out to invisible borders of non-duality. Repetition, paradox and oxymoron become in these poems a chaos of harmony - the poets words drunk with self, other, truth, the Word. Her prophetic tongue of fire sets readers hearts burning within them." -- Kate Marshall Flaherty
