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https://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/
"Farrokhzad's first collection, of forty-four poems including all those cited and quoted called (the) captive, was published in the early summer of 1955. The speaker throughout these poems is a serious, searching, loving, young woman. The poems contain no philosophizing themes, or full-blown descriptions of nature. Images drawn from nature appear in these poems as part of a world in which love and the giving it implies are all that matter or seem, to exist. The speaker reveals a spectrum of moods: anticipation, regret, joy, remorse, loneliness, abandon, repentance, doubt, and reverie. But the immediate issue is love, a woman's love for a man that makes the heart ache and that can satisfy all needs. Men appear in various stances, from proud, possessive, uncomprehending, faithless conquerors of the body to selfless lovers of whom the speaker feels unworthy. Men in the Captive poems are there with strong chests, embracing arms, heads to be held in one's lap, Lips to kiss. Lovemaking is often an end in itself, but has meaning as such. Some men do not comprehend this. Others, who see the speaker as a promiscuous object, are ignorant of love's magic and meaning and unprepared to commit themselves to love's giving. Although not joyous for the most part, The Captive poems radiate the vitality, sensuality, and hopefulness of a young woman emphatically portraying the significance of love. The poems as a whole lack an explicit Islamic environment or palpable Iranian settings, even though the reader can assume that the speakers' reiterated sense of captivity reflects a climate of traditional mores both Islamic and Iranian. Furthermore, the domestic setting seem both Iranian and reflective of conflicting emotions and doubts Forugh experienced as young wife, mother, and poet.
The immediacy and intensity of reader reaction to the personal, autobiographical voice in The Captive derived in large measure, of course, from their unprecedented feminine character. But even had Farrokhzad speakers, content, and perspectives been "masculine", the poems in The Captive and her subsequent collections would have provoked strong reader response because of a second, almost equally provocative feature: their "modernist" as opposed to "traditionalist" character."