Bryce Warnes reviews The OceanDweller by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi (trans. Khashayar Mohammadi (2021) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for The OceanDweller by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi (trans. Khashayar Mohammadi) (2021) over at The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, trans. Khashayar Mohammadi

above/ground press | Ottawa, 2021

Staple bound, 10 pages | Purchase

Via Khashayar Mohammadi’s translation, Saeed Tavanaee Marvi cruises the strait between Earth and Hell, acacias and tornadoes, Buster Keaton and a swarm of insects. “Pain is the key to the human interior,” we learn in White Poplar; the door opens on a dizzying inner/outer world, where phones both “resemble planets  / giving meaning to long incomprehensible numbers,” and smell of violets (Me, Her, Telephone), where ancient battles break out, and a mysterious vehicle called the OceanCruiser sings, in its “most cordial hymn,” that “we’re born to test our hearts … kiss whomever you love without a word,” (The Deep Wound.) On meaning’s rough seas, The OceanDweller—the first volume of Marvi’s work in English—keeps us precariously, giddily afloat.