Vox Populi
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Houman Harouni: The Dervish
The postures I held for long breaths by the flow of the Ganges I did not hold to achieve light I held no star in sight as I turned my body into a bow If I prayed in my small American flat where every surface eyed my lips with contempt I did not pray for justice but for this stranger’s voice to drain from me The art of war the way of the monk all the pillars of wisdom lie submerged in the brittle cold of time and the current pulls their remnants into the small enclosure of one last impatient soul These profane lines I carve into the walls of your city did not dare hope to deepen your love but only to lessen the distance between one name and another In this way the dervish has honored the mistakes of his life
From Unrevolutionary Times (Arrowsmith Press, 2022). © 2022 Houman Harouni. All Rights Reserved. Included in Vox Populi by permission of Arrowsmith Press and the author.
Houman Harouni was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1982, and migrated, as a refugee, to the United States in 1997. His father was, for a time, a professional revolutionary, and his mother, for a time, a sociologist of revolution. He is a theorist of cultural transformation. His work moves across philosophy, political economy, history of science, psychology, theater, and literature, culminating in his pedagogy of Active Theory, which he has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since 2015. His academic and journalistic writings have appeared in a wide array of publications, including The Guardian, PBS Frontline, The White Review, and the Harvard Educational Review. He has been awarded Fellowships at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education. Unrevolutionary Times is Harouni’s first collection of poems.
Vox Populi 
I so agree with John Zeng!
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Wish poetry could shorten the distance between people.
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You don’t think it does?
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Poetry – a shimmering thread from one soul to another
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Lovely line. Thank you!
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