About My Work
Deciding who to book for the reading or talk you are planning requires research into who might be a good fit for the program you have in mind. To facilitate that process—since the fact that you’re on this page suggests you might be interested in me—I’ve gathered here in one place some information to help you decide if what I have to offer is indeed a good fit. You can learn about the books I’ve published here and read examples of work I’ve published online here. If you’re interested in getting a sense of what I’m like in front of an audience, you can also check out videos of readings and talks that I’ve given. Overall, my work can be divided into two categories: my own poetry and essays and the translations I have published of classical Persian poetry. I do not experience these categories as self-contained wholes, but it’s probably useful if I talk about them that way here.
Poetry and Essays
Almost everything I write is rooted in the impact feminism had on my life as the first lens through which I was able to name as sexual violence what the men who violated me did to me when I was a boy. While much has changed in how we view male survivors since I first discovered feminism in the 1980s, we still tend to see men solely as perpetrators, enablers, or bystanders, not as sexually vulnerable human beings who can be, a significant number of whom have already been, sexually victimized. Inherent in acknowledging this duality is the challenge of making visible the differences between how men and women experience sexual violence, while at the same time not eliding or otherwise minimizing men's responsibility and accountability in a male dominant society where sexual violence is normalized. The desire to meet that challenge is an energy that animates all of my work, even when the subject matter is something other than sexual violence itself.
Literary Translations
In the early 2000s, I was commissioned by the now-defunct International Society for Iranian Culture (ISIC) to produce book-length literary translations of selections from five masterpieces of classical Persian literature. When ISIC first approached me, I declined. I speak and understand some spoken Persian, but I am neither literate nor anywhere near natively fluent in the language. In response, ISIC’s executive director encouraged me to see the work they were asking me to do as part of the long history of poet-translators who rely on semantically accurate “trots” (some call them “ponies”) in rendering the source text into a literary form in the target language. In the end, I agreed for two primary reasons:
- ISIC’s goal was to use those translations to open a window onto Iran’s culture and history through which most Americans had never had the opportunity to look. Given that President George W. Bush had recently named Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil,” I thought the kind of cultural exchange ISIC wanted to facilitate using the translations was important.
- My son is Iranian American. It seemed to me that young Iranian Americans like him, who may never have the opportunity to read classical Persian literature in its original form, deserve access to this part of their heritage not in the dry and pedantic language of scholarly translation, but in versions that, because they “sing” in English, at least “harmonize” with the Persian original.
The translations I published, which you can learn more about here, are out of print, but I know, based on the responses I get both when I give readings from them and when I give the talk called “On The Trail Of A Tale: Benjamin Franklin’s Persian Parable” (see below), that they have been successful in achieving ISIC’s goal.
What I Offer
In addition both to the two subject areas I’ve just described and the readings and talks I describe below, my work in the literary community also includes more than a decade of hosting and curating the First Tuesdays reading series in the town where I live. I’ve written a little bit about that experience, and the unique, cento-building, approach we take to the open mic, on LitHub. If you’re interested in learning more about how that works and how it can help build an open mic series into a community, or if you’re interested in having me host a reading event using that approach for you, please get in touch.
Readings
If you’re interested in seeing me “in action,” so to speak, there are videos of me reading on the Read•Watch•Listen page. I especially enjoy the challenge of tailoring what I read to a theme, because it offers the opportunity to weave my work into the larger story of whatever the theme happens to be. I’ve given readings focused on vulnerability, love, manhood and masculinity, healing from sexual violence, Jewish identity, and more. If you’re thinking about incorporating a poetry reading into your program or event and you think my work might be a good fit, please get in touch.
Talks
Rather than tell you in the abstract about the subject matter I am most qualified to speak about, it’s probably easier to tell you about some of the talks I’ve given:
Claiming The Politics of My Survivorship
In the 1980s, when I began to come to terms with what the men who violated me did to me, men’s sexual violence against girls and women was just beginning to make its way into our mainstream discourse. No one was talking about the sexual abuse of boys. It was in feminism, in other words, that I discovered both the language to name as sexual violence what those men did to me and the perspective to see myself as a survivor, not a victim. Moreover, in its uncompromising insistence that the only person responsible for an act of sexual violence is the one who perpetrates it, feminism also gave me the gift of anger. Whatever else may have been true about how being violated impacted me, in other words, once I started reading the work of feminist writers, I never wavered in my certainty that what those men did to me was their fault, not mine, and that they, therefore, not I, deserved to be the target of the rage I felt. In this talk, I explore what it means to claim the politics of feminism as the starting point of my own healing.
Choosing a Genre
A crucial question to ask yourself if you plan to publish what you write about your own trauma is why you believe the work deserves a reading public. Or, to put that question another way, why you think readers need your work. Implicit in both those questions is the question of the genre in which you choose to write and why. I have written both poetry and creative nonfiction about my experience as a survivor of childhood sexual violence. Taking as a starting point my own experience with the different kinds of work each genre does, this talk explores why a writer would choose poetry over creative nonfiction, or vice versa, when writing about their own trauma.
The Ethics of Bearing Witness To Violence and Trauma in Poetry
No one—not the perpetrator, not the victim, not the witness (if there is one)—comes away from trauma unchanged. As a result, to bear witness to trauma in poetry—the verb is not incidental—is to carry the burden not just of saying who did what to whom, but also of articulating your stake as the poet in the act of witnessing, of being able to make what the act of witnessing did to you part of the experience of the poem. This talk explores some of the ethical considerations arising from the choice to write a poetry of witness.
On The Trail of a Tale: Benjamin Franklin’s Persian Parable
Benjamin Franklin’s Parable Against Persecution was, in its time, one of his most popular pieces of writing, telling the story of how God admonished Abraham for refusing hospitality to a Zoroastrian. Franklin wrote the Parable in the style of the King James Bible and often passed it off as a chapter of Genesis, especially when arguing in favor of religious tolerance. What Franklin didn’t know is that the original version of the story told in the Parable was a poem by the 13th century Iranian poet Saadi of Shiraz. This talk, which can be adapted into a workshop for teachers who might be interested in teaching this material, traces the path Saadi's poem took across three continents, four languages, and at least three religious traditions to get from 13th century Iran to 17th century America.
Please get in touch if you'd like to discuss having me speak at your event.