Submission by Zahra Jannessari Ladani

[M.O.P]

Poem by Zahra Jannessari Ladani

Post-Cubism: Here’s No Picasso!

This is no cubism and here’s no Picasso!

This is only sore reality whirling

On di-verse tongues.

Tongues that touched the roots!

Dead! Thousands of them bombed in Yemen,

And another thousand shot in Gaza,

Many beheaded in Iraq, many in Afghanistan,

Many dead in blood pools in Myanmar,

And children gagging under the rubble in Syria,

Men terrified by the detonation of bombs

In the panic of Manchester, London, and the Philippines.

Dead! Many civilians! When you sit at their tombs

And are wanting an elegy for the innocent killed

Let all look at me!   1.

They say it’s DAESH:

“Remaining and Expanding”,

“My Nation, A Dawn Has Appeared.”

“We Kill to Warrant Our Salvation in Paradise.”

“We Kill for God’s Sake”!

“To be or not to be,” that’s no longer the question;   2.

This is no “time yet for hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,”   3.

Before the massacre of thousands by the WMD,   4.

This is no more the question that drops on your plate;

The decisions have long been made,

The question is how and how many to kill.

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1. An allusion to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Mother and Poet”
2. Parody of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
3. Allusion to T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
4. Weapon of Mass Destruction


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Bio:

My name is Zahra and my last name is Jannesari Ladani. I was born in 1981 in Isfahan, Iran.

I am an assistant professor of English Literature at the University of Isfahan. I'm the Persian translator of Kristina Nelson’s The Art of Reciting the Quran and English editor of Quran Recitation Skills. I've also translated a number of Stanley G. Weinbaum’s SF stories to Persian for the first time. My major contributions to the science fiction domain consist of my lecture “The Rise of the Pulps, 1900s-1930s” given to Lars Schmeink’s The Virtual Introduction to Science Fiction, and my chapter “John W. Campbell and his Writers” published in Leigh Grossman’s Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction. My new book chapter, “Robert A. Heinlein in Historical and Cultural Context,” has been published in Rafeeq McGiveron’s Critical Insights: Robert A. Heinlein by the Salem Press. I'm the writer of a number of articles published in diverse journals such as Research in Contemporary World Literature, Lesan Mobin, Translation Studies, etc.

Zahra Jannessari-Ladani,
Assistant Prof. of English Literature
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Foreign languages
University of Isfahan
Isfahan, Iran.

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Dear Sir/ Madam,

I would be very much thankful if you display the attached poem written by Ms. Jannesari in the forum which is confirmed by Dr. Frosini.

Best regards,

Elham Jafari

M.O.P and EAA Representative of PUW

[Richard Deodati]

In an apparent reference to "Guernica," a famous cubist-style painting by Picasso depicting the Nazi devastation during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, Zahra Jannessari Ladani has expressed the total outrage and disbelief that has occurred way beyond the murderous war of almost a century ago, from the terrible onslaught and horror that has occurred more recently in the name of terrorism. She then refers to a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and makes reference to lines from T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to add fuel to the fire in this sad, symbolic, devastating poem in consecration to genocide by terror.