Ghazal Games: Poems
In his new collection of poetry, Roger Sedarat strikes the perfect balance between Eastern and Western expression, between the modern and the medieval, and between the sacred and the profane. A delight on every page, one can’t help but imagine that if Hafez, Rumi, and other Sufi mystic poets — even Goethe — were transported to the twenty–first century, their tweets might read something like this.     Hooman Majd — author ofThe Ayatollahs’ Democracy: An Iranian Challenge These poems are to be savored in their audacity — in turn witty, erotic, ludic, learned, engaged. Roger Sedarat’s ghazals bridge the form’s (and the poet’s) Persian sources to American demotic language, and open couplet windows on transnational reality.  Marilyn Hacker — winner of the National Book Award and author ofNames: Poems Ghazal Gamesoverflows with intelligent charm: its well-formed couplets, fueled by iconoclasm, are blessed with clarity, goodheartedness, pizzazz, and prankishness. Let’s crown Roger Sedarat the king of Carnival; long may he reign. Wayne Koestenbaum — author ofBest–Selling Jewish Porn Films