Three songs for Iran: gender and social commitment in the poetry of Parvin E’tesami, Forugh Farrokhzad, and Simin Behbahani

In his introduction to the 1997 special issue of the journal Iranian Studies dedicated to postrevolutionary Iranian literature, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak advances the concept of literary topicality,1 which-paradoxically perhaps-can also be applied to three poems from the golden font of modern Iranian literature: Parvin E’tesami’s “The Sapling of Hope” (written in 1924), Forugh Farrokhzad’s “I Pity the Garden” (pub. 1974), and Simin Behbahani’s “My Homeland, I’ll Rebuild You Yet Again” (written in Esfand 1360/1982).