Sholeh Wolpé: California Poets Part 4, Four Poems

Sholeh Wolpé (photo by Sophie Kandaouroff)

December 29th, 2021

California Poets: Part IV

Sholeh Wolpé

Four beads from Sholeh Wolpé’s memoir in verse, Abacus of Loss, forthcoming in March 2022 from the University of Arkansas Press

Bead 1

I sit at this kitchen table in Los Angeles and take account:

There is my childhood house becoming smoke, friends

scattered like storm-blown dandelion seeds, my mother

tongue ripped blue from my throat.

See the man I used to call husband sinking into the twin

lungs of an ice beast, a love murdered by his own pallid

hands;

see vein shades of lovers who came and went, a homeland

community in jail, my cousin’s husband graying on the

run, my school principal and his wife hanging from beryl

ropes.

That we choose the color

of our loss, like a blue

sash draped across

mourners’ black. That

eyes follow blind

towards the cobalt moon,

will slant us over and

down, crooked toward

mud on our graves.

Bead 2 Loss is a language we all speak well, a body moan that echoes between ribs, the downfall that becomes windfall.

Bead 3 Granddaddy takes me and my brothers out every Friday to a circus filled with tigers, elephants, horses, and shirtless men in glittering tights. There are women tinier than my child’s body, animals bigger than my room. It is roaring fun until the giant with four faces. My arms begin to shake. Shivers ripple to the tips of my fingers. Granddaddy puts a hand on my shoulder, says: It’s just a mask on his head. But I know better because anything that’s loved— a delicious granddaddy day in that circus in Tehran, sticky cotton candy melting its pink song into my mouth, my brothers, each naughty, toothy with joy— is always burning toward a future not yet come, fireworks in my brain, hot sparks welded to each memory.

Bead 4 A painted cardboard car gives birth to clown after clown. Like lovers: the soldier, the thief, the cheater, the psycho lawyer.

Interview

January 28th, 2026

California Poets Interview Series:

Sholeh Wolpé, Poet, Playwright, Translator

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: In Abacus of Loss, a memoir in verse, you write clearly and powerfully about your upbringing, and you introduce the collection in this way: "The abacus is an instrument of remembering." To contrast, there's the Nietzschean concept of abandoning the past, because, in his view, it "returns as a ghost and disturbs the peace of a later moment." Strangely, ghosts are a recurring theme in your work. To what extent is the memoir also about forgetting the past—to forget it for a new future?

Sholeh Wolpé: Nietzsche’s warning about the past returning as a ghost resonates with me. Ghosts appear when something has not been fully seen or acknowledged. The memories in Abacus of Loss had to be named, counted, and placed—like beads on an abacus—so they could stop floating unanchored. Only then could they be released. Reconciling, as I understand it, comes after recognition. It is the result of having looked closely, without flinching.

The ghosts in my work are reminders of unfinished conversations—versions of the self that might have been, lives interrupted by exile, silence, or displacement. Writing allowed me to turn those ghosts into witnesses rather than pursuers. Once they are given form, they no longer deman demand my constant attention.

So the memoir moves toward forgetting in a very practical way. Not forgetting what happened, but forgetting the grip it once had on my present. By the end of the book, memory is no longer an open wound; it becomes a source of clarity. The future it gestures toward is not a clean slate, but a livable one—where the past has been integrated, not abandoned, and and therefore no longer needs to return in disguise.

DG: Abacus of Loss was recently released as a bilingual edition by Visor Libros in Spain. What do you think of the translation, how closely did you work with the translator, and are there plans to release the collection in other languages?

Sholeh Wolpé: Corina Oproae who translated the book into Spanish is not only an award- winning novelist but a formidable poet in her own right. Abacus of Loss is a book where meaning lives as much in cadence, restraint, and silence as in narrative, and those are things only a poet can truly re-create in another language.

From the outset, I trusted her completely. We worked closely and attentively—our exchanges were thoughtful and precise and often centered on tone, emotional temperature, and meaning of certain words and phrases. She understood that translation, especially of a memoir in verse, is not transcription but re-creation. I believe she carried the book into Spanish with integrity, sensitivity, and real poetic intelligence.

As for future languages, I’m open—but careful. This book is intimate, and it asks a great deal of its translator. Any further editions would depend entirely on finding translators I trust at that same level.

DG: Let’s return to the concept of active forgetting. How difficult was it for you to decide what to include and what to leave out in Abacus of Loss?

Sholeh Wolpé: Abacus of Loss is not a comprehensive record of my past; it is a shaped one. It examines a life—mine, yes, but also the lives of those who inhabit the poems. We do not live in isolation. Our lives are braided with others’, and our stories are, inevitably, collective. Because of that, I didn’t write the book by asking what to include or exclude. The process felt closer to composing music than to writing a book. Each moment seemed to know where it belonged, when to enter, when to fall silent. I trusted that internal logic. I think the book can be read in one sitting, the way one listens to a piece of music, hearing the arc of a life unfold. My life—but also, I hope, at some level, the reader’s.

DG: Your translations are not literal renderings, but recreations that bridge divides between cultures. Could you talk a bit more about your translation process and what challenges might exist at any given time?

Sholeh Wolpé: I don’t think of translation as transfer, but as re-composition. A poem does not move from one language to another intact; it has to be re-created so it can breathe in a new body. Literal accuracy alone cannot do that. What matters to me is fidelity to intention, tone, and inner movement—the life of the poem rather than its surface.

My process is slow and exacting. Before I write a single line in English, I live inside the original text. I study its ambiguities, its silences. Persian allows for layers of meaning—spiritual, emotional, and philosophical, in a single word or turn of a phrase. One of the constant challenges is resisting English's desire to clarify and categorize, especially its impulse to impose gender, certainty, or hierarchy where the original remains open.

Another challenge is ethical rather than technical. Translation carries responsibility. You can illuminate a text, but you can also distort it—by domesticating it, softening its strangeness, or forcing it to conform to contemporary expectations. I try to avoid that. My aim is not to make the poem easier, but to make it alive.

DG: The Invisible Sun is your newest book of translations for Attar. When did you discover his work and what do you enjoy most about translating him?

Sholeh Wolpé: I grew up with classical poetry. It’s part of my culture. My upbringing. But I connected with Attar’s poetry as an adult at a moment when I was searching—not for comfort or a version of "truth," but for honesty.

Attar is uncompromising about the ego, ruthless in his diagnosis of self-deception, yet deeply compassionate about human frailty. He never flatters the reader. He insists on movement, on shedding what no longer serves, and he warns repeatedly against stagnation—spiritual, emotional, or intellectual. That insistence feels especially relevant now.

Translating Attar has been transformational for me. It continues to change me, each day. To translate him, I had to slow down, listen closely, and let go of certainty. Persian allows a range of ambiguity that English resists, so the challenge is to preserve openness without turning the poems vague or ornamental. I'm constantly negotiating between clarity and mystery, precision and resonance.

Translating Attar has been the most important work of my life—for myself and I hope for all those who find and read him.

DG: In the eighth bead of “Faith,” you include passages of Rumi. Which poets do you wish were more frequently translated or taught abroad, and why?

Sholeh Wolpé: There are many Iranian poets whose work deserves deeper, more careful presence beyond their native language—but what matters to me is not frequency so much as how they are translated and taught. I love Rumi, but in this instance, he is a good example. He is everywhere, yet so often stripped of context, theology, and rigor, reduced to aphorism or comfort language. That kind of circulation flattens a poet.

There are many poets I wish were translated and taught today—important 20th century poets. But there are also younger, brilliant poets of this century. Poets who were born in and grew up under the Islamic Republics oppressive regime. Poets such as Mohsen Emadi, Fereshteh Sari, Behzad Zarrinpour and Granaz Mousavi, just to name a few. They need good, sensitive translators.

DG: In having translated Forugh Farrokhzad, you share the courage she had in writing about the body. Who are some other contemporary Persian voices that have been central to your poetic development?

Sholeh Wolpé: Forugh Farrokhzad was singular in her fearlessness and rebellion. I read her as a teenager, and then throughout my life. Her poetry impacted me in various degrees at different points in my life. But I also came of age reading and influenced by a generation of other Persian poets who were wrestling—each in their own way—with rupture, modernity, and the limits of language. One of them is Ahmad Shamlou. His moral seriousness, his refusal of ornament, and his insistence that poetry carry ethical weight left a deep impression on me.

I also love Sohrab Sepehri. From him I learned something very different but equally lasting: restraint, attentiveness, and a way of seeing the world without coercion. His work taught me to listen. Mehdi Akhavan-Sales’ engagement with myth, history, and political disillusion gave language to collective grief without collapsing into despair, and Simin Behbahani’s unapologetic intelligence expanded what a woman’s voice could do against tradition.

These poets had the courage to speak, courage to shape poems with discipline and intent. They taught me that writing about the body, about love, about loss, is never merely personal. It is a way of entering the larger world with open eyes.

DG: In writing, do you ever think more in one language as opposed to the other?

Sholeh Wolpé: Persian and English live in me with equal weight. I can think in both languages. It’s like thinking in different colors—each carries its own emotional register, its own temperature. I live, however, surrounded by English, and English is the language in which I write. So naturally, I inhale it more often. Still, Persian remains the base color—the ground against which all the other colors take form. Because a language isn’t just about words. It is a state of being.

DG: Persian has such unique words that don’t exist in English. What are some of your favorite ones?

Sholeh Wolpé: One of my favorites is gham. It’s often translated as sorrow, but that flat translation of the word does not do it justice. Gham is a dense, dignified sadness. It has weight. Another is mehr. It can mean love, kindness, affection, even sun—but in truth, mehr is love without possession, warmth without demand. It's relational, ethical, almost cosmological. I also love del, often translated as heart. But that does not do the word justice. Del is to the seat of being—the place where thought, emotion, intuition, and consciousness converge.

DG: If you had to recommend one Persian dish to someone unfamiliar with the culture, which one would it be?

Sholeh Wolpé: I love all Persian dishes. Still, I think āb-goosht is my favorite. It's one of the oldest and most beloved Persian dishes. It is humble and communal. Lamb, chickpeas, white beans, potatoes, onions, turmeric, and dried omani lime are simmered for hours until everything relinquishes itself to the broth. Once ready, the broth is served separately and is often eaten with fresh bread. The solids are mashed together with a pestle into a thick, earthy paste called goosht-kubideh. It’s eaten with bread, raw herbs and raw onions. It’s a magnificent aromatic dish.

DG: What are you reading or working on at the moment?

Sholeh Wolpé: I’m a bit unconventional in how I work. I move between multiple projects at once, and I usually read several books in parallel. It’s simply how my mind stays alive—and how I stay happy. Presently, I’m finishing a novel about a nineteenth-century poet, and co-editing an anthology of poems with my friend and fellow poet Tony Barnstone. I am reading Kiren Desai’s Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, as well as Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease To Understand the World. I’m also reading ghazals of Shams-i-Tabrizi in Persian.

Author Bio:

Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-American poet, translator, and playwright. She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, several plays, and an oratorio. Her most recent book, Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse (Univ. of Arkansas Press, March 2022) is hailed by National Book Award finalist Ilya Kaminsky as a book “that created its own genre—a thrill of lyric combined with the narrative spell.” Sholeh has lived in Iran, Trinidad, and the United Kingdom and is currently a writer-in-residence at the University of California, Irvine. She lives in Los Angeles and Barcelona.