Someone
Who Is Not Like Anyone - VIEW
THE POEM
I've
had a dream that someone is coming.
I've dreamt of a red star,
and my eye lids keep twitching
and my shoes keep snapping to attention
If I' m lying.
"Someone Who Is
Not Like Anyone" stands as Farrokhzad's most expansive statement as
to hopes for the political and social salvation of the Iranian people.
But what initially appears in the poem to be optimism toward the future
is belied by the mode of presentation. The same is true for Shamlu's
The Fairies, which ultimately strikes one as wishful thinking on the
poet's part in its vision of the liberation of the city of captive
people precisely because what it recounts happens only in a fairy
tale. "Someone Who Is Not Like Anyone" may be no more realistic in
comparison, despite the specificity of its vision, because its speaker
is not Farrokhzad herself-who is dramatically frank and direct when
speaking through personae much like herself-but rather a ten-or eleven-year
old, lower class, urban girl who can offer only her hope and fertile,
down-to-earth imagination as ground for supposing that her vision
of social justice might really come to pass. Even she recognizes that
adults do not or, better, know enough not to dream while awake.
A
Lonely Woman Michael C. Hillmann page 68
Reprinted from
Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry, by Michael C. Hillmann.
Copyright © 1987 by Michael C. Hillmann. Reprinted with permission of
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
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