This Issue is Delayed 1

This delayed issue demonstrates the technique of visualizing the form of another book, a different combination featuring a collection of original and translated poems, stories, articles, and more. The first volume is accompanied by an appendix detailing the life and works of an Iranian painter, including five color images and three black-and-white images. Those who pay attention to its structural nature will easily understand that the effort of the team behind this collection was to make both form and content a unified composition, based on the experiences of various modern book designers from the recent past. It is an experimental work striving to set aside the classic binary opposition of heart and content, or form and meaning, in pursuit of harmonious multiplicity and unity. Thus, the role of visual arts—such as graphics—follows a different course here, just as its appendix is not merely an appendix but an integral part of the underlying stories. It does not follow the customs and tastes of the time, and its poetry, whether Iranian or non-Iranian, in this volume, is essentially an example of a different creative recreation compared to what was witnessed in modern Iranian poetry in both original and translated forms. Specifically, it is a type of poetry whose abstract branch re-emerged coherently on the scene only after more than thirty years’ delay, with the work of Houshang Chalakani in 2001. This era begins with Nima, continues with Nima-inspired poets, and ends with New Nimaists, only to then, amidst a deep crisis, look back at the prose past of Iranian and world poetry from a new perspective.