Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season

"Living through a period that promised more freedom than it offered, she found a literary form to register its contradictions. Her poetry embraces pleasure in the face of social censure, seeks a genuine spirituality while rebuking the cant of tradition." -- Ratik Asokan - 4Columns
"Iran’s leading literary journal, Sokhan, wrote after her funeral, ‘Forough is perhaps the first female writer in Persian literature to express the emotions and romantic feelings of the feminine gender in her verse with distinctive frankness and elegance, for which reason she has inaugurated a new chapter in Persian poetry." -- The New York Times
"In every culture you have cultural icons, like Shakespeare in Britain. Farrokhzad was like that for contemporary Iran, someone who formed the identity of our contemporariness." -- Mehdi Jami - The Guardian
"Farrokhzad wrote poetry on the horizon of working for a civil society in which men’s freedom was not complete without women’s freedom, and for a life in which the soul’s freedom was not separate from the body’s—individually, socially, and culturally. Her poetry is a space that radiates aspiration and exaltation, a space ablaze with vitality, desire, and beauty." -- Adonis
"Elizabeth T. Gray’s new literary translations offer the unstoppable voice of world-class poet Forough Farrokhzad to English speakers and broaden the horizon for comparative readings of the poet’s work, a treasured joy unto itself." -- Niloufar Talebi, author of Self-Portrait in Bloom
"Joy, rage, despair, transcendence—Farrokhzad's poems, like the life from which they were often drawn, contain multitudes. In Elizabeth T. Gray’s assured translations, each poem is tightly conceived and elegantly modulated, the language precise, the voice as fresh and vivid as Farrokhzad’s own. A vital contribution to Farrokhzad’s legacy." -- Jasmin Darznik, author of The Bohemians
"In her translation, Elizabeth T. Gray Jr. sought to capture “as much of the beauty, strangeness, ferocity, and stillness of the original.” She has done so, and more, bringing the best of Farrokhzad into the light, where she is easily recognized to be as relevant and fresh today as she was sixty years ago." -- World Literature Today
"Innocence has given way to experience. The poet commands her emotions rather than surrendering to them." -- World Socialist Web Site
"Full of wonderful imagery, heart-rending avowals, and cris de coeur." -- The Hudson Review