Bagh-e Bi-Bargi

Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1928-1990) is one of the most important figures in modern Persian literature. However, his poetry is little known in the West. Even in Iran, though held in high regard, his work is considered hermetic. There is no unambiguous message, no identifiable political or aesthetic doctrine. Still, his poems exert a strange, haunting power. What do they tell us, now, two decades after the poet's death? What do they mean outside their homeland? What is their voice in world literature?