Abstract
"For me, there is something so solid and comforting in stone" says Sassan Tabatabai in our conversation, and in his poem "Firestones" the words roll, weigh and satisfyingly click together. In our conversation, we touched on scholar s stones came up, and Gerard Manley Hopkins s journals full of words/names. From here we moved to other poems and poems and Sassan s work in different languages (Persian, English), poetic traditions (haiku, Sufi poetry, ghazal) and activities (writing, translation, teaching). His dissertation on Persian poet Rudaki is mentioned. His "messy" practice across these many boundaries expresses a kind of playful profusion, ultimately rooted in sound, word, and the music of the lines. We closed out our conversation with a reading of Sassan s translation of David Ferry s "Resemblance" (also featured in episode 55), with the Persian and English stanzas alternating.