Poetry
و آفتاب نمیمیرد
Not translated into English
Wasef Bakhtari · 1984
Synopsis
Wa āftāb nemimirad, Et le soleil ne meurt pas, is the first published collection by Wasef Bakhtari, printed in Kabul in 1984 by the Writers' Union of Afghanistan. Its thirty-nine poems, in classical and new forms, cover a little over twenty years of writing; one bears the name of Hafez. The book also gives in Persian a poem by Brecht, another by the Cuban Regino Pedroso and a third by Byron, which the author says he rendered freely.
Context
The site devoted to his work gives the print run, three thousand copies of ninety-three pages, and dates the printing to the month of hoot 1362, that is, the end of winter 1984; the poems range from 1340 to 1362 of the solar calendar. The book was later reprinted in Canada and the United States. The obituaries of 2023 place it first among his collections, ahead of Az mi'ād tā hargez and about ten others.
Who it is for
Poems in Persian, untranslated. The reader will benefit from knowing a little of Hafez, to whom one of the texts is dedicated.
Prizes and reception
No known prize for this book. The poet Kazem Kazemi calls its author the poet of poets of Afghanistan.