Gea - My Mirror, The Earth is a transcript from the original poem in Farsi language (and the German translation of the poem, which was published by Edition l'Aleph), which unfortunately due to censorship in Iran has been never published in Farsi. The transcript is a masterpiece of translation by Jeanette Skirvin. Taking into account that until today never long modern poems (odes of a volume of a whole book) have been translated and published from Farsi to English, this transcript is absolutely unique in regard to the power of poetry language and raising serious attention of a world audience to modern Iranian poetry - rather isolated after 1990. Gea is an ode to the earth and life with a strong literary momentum, melting symbols, metaphors, archetypes, nature and culture… of East and West, Orient and Oxidant, in modern times of poetry. — If an image is worth one thousand words then that is why I reached for GEA - Blame the charming cover. The title, though scripted in a foreign tongue, did not discourage me from opening this slim little book. What met my gaze was a list of unfamiliar words tumbling down the left sides of otherwise blank pages. Words were capitalized at random. Punctuation appeared practically non-existent. There were no discernable hints as to beginnings and endings of phrases, sentences or even one paragraph. This will be easy, I thought. I’ll simply pay a visit to the local college language department and beseech an esteemed linguist to interpret the content for me. What happens when time runs ahead of schedule leaving no time for leisure’s chase-down of a college Professor with enough time on his hands willing to pause long enough between lectures to indulge in a translation of anything with me? I proceeded as an archeologist might when approaching a curious landscape. Armed with German-to-English dictionaries, I searched one word at a time… one page after another… until I had scratched together a pile of English words. One by one the words were sifted into ideas to reveal phrases suggesting metaphors… symbols… history… religion… regions… nature… mores and culture. By the last page I had come to learn GEA is a poet’s tribute-ode to Planet Earth. If one could sing what one hears in Sam Vaseghi’s GEA, The Earth My Mirror then this epic trilogy is a tapestry of literary opera. Jeanette Leone Skirvin is an award winning Canadian author [FACE, Snow Sizzling in Soleil, Jaguar Ravenz King, Rollins of Stone House] and co-editor of STARK, The Poetry Journal.
