University Press of America
Pages: 134
•
Trim: 6 x 9¼
978-0-7618-5054-0 • Paperback • April 2010 • $42.99 • (£33.00)
978-0-7618-5055-7 • eBook • April 2010 • $40.50 • (£31.00)
Vahé Baladouni has contributed to a number of Middle Eastern Armenian literary periodicals, and translated the poetry and prose of writers such as Shakespeare, Shelley, and Wilde into Armenian in Translations (1973). He compiled and edited Hmayeak Shems: Entir Erker [Hmayeak Shems: Select Works] (1994); translated (with John Gery) Shems's prose poems into Engish, For the House of Torkom (1999); and helped publish several of Shems's works in Erevan, Armenia, (2001-2004).
John Gery has published five volumes of poetry, most recently A Gallery of Ghosts (2008), and has written extensively on modern and contemporary poetry, including the books Contemporary American Poetry and Nuclear Annihilation: Ways of Nothingness (1996) and (with others) In Venice and in the Veneto with Ezra Pound (2007). He has co-translated works from Serbian, Chinese, Armenian, and French, is professor of literature and creative writing at the University of New Orleans, and directs the Ezra Pound Center for Literature at Brunnenburg, Italy.
Chapter 1 List of Photographs
Chapter 2 Preface
Chapter 3 Acknowledgments
Chapter 4 Reference Key
Chapter 5 A Chronology of Hmayeak Shems
Chapter 6 A Diasporan Journey: Cities Where Shems Visited and Lived
Chapter 7 Part I Student, Rebel, and Wandering Dervish: From Trabzon to the Caucasus and the Balkans
Chapter 8 Part II Poet, Scholar, Orator, and Teacher: Alexandria
Chapter 9 Appendix A "A Portrait of Hmayeak Shems" by Gurgen Mkhit'arian
Chapter 10 Appendix B "The Hmayeak Shems I Knew" by Step'an Shahpaz
Chapter 11 Appendix C An Undated Draft Letter to Levon Hovhannesian Written by Hmayeak Shems
Chapter 12 Notes
Chapter 13 Acronyms and Abbreviations
Chapter 14 Selected Bibliography
Chapter 15 Index
Intense music rises from the very heart of his poetry, expanding the allure of compressed beauties.
— Vardan Gevorgian
Shems's language…unites Eastern and Western Armenian both in terms of its form and of its usage. His pan-Armenian mode of thought is a phenomenon rather rare in our times.
— Gevorg K'rist'inian
Shems's writing is the poetry of pure spirit, the murmur of a restless soul. It is a cry of protest and rebellion, a quest for beauty and a dream, expressed in a powerful voice…. The best way to portray Shems is to think of the magnificent ruins of Armenian churches. He was an expatriate, a lone émigré in search of Mt. Ararat and its shade, a man seeking the heart in others, a dreamer who longed to create the song of the heart…. a dervish aspiring to be an artist, an artist living the life of a dervish.
— Gurgen Mkhit'arian