Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse

By Sholeh Wolpé

lbert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” It is in this vein that Sholeh Wolpé’s mesmerizing memoir in verse unfolds. In this lyrical and candid work, her fifth collection of poems, Wolpé invokes the abacus as an instrument of remembering. Through different countries and cultures, she carries us bead by bead on a journey of loss and triumph, love and exile. In the end, the tally is insight, not numbers, and we arrive at a place where nothing is too small for gratitude.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Release date: Mar 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781610757652

Book preview

OTHER TITLES BY SHOLEH WOLPÉ

POETRY

Cómo Escribir una Canción de Amor (2017)

Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths (2013)

Rooftops of Tehran (2008)

The Scar Saloon (2004)

TRANSLATIONS

The Conference of the Birds (2017)

Blue Swedish for Nowruz (2015)

Walt Whitman: Song of Myself in Persian (2012)

Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (2007)

ANTHOLOGIES

Breaking the Jaws of Silence: Sixty American Poets Speak to the World (2013)

The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and Its Exiles (2012)

PLAYS

Shame

The Conference of the Birds

Let Me In

Holy Corona

Brothers at the Canadian Border

Red in Konya

LIBRETTOS/LYRICS

The Conference of the Birds — An Oratorio (composer: Fahad Siadat)

Color of Loss (composer: Aida Shirazi)

This Coffin (composer: Aida Shirazi)

Not Infinite If Not God (composer: Fahad Siadat)

Effervescence (composer: Chris Gordon)

I Am Neda (composer: Mamak Khadem)

ABACUS OF LOSS

A Memoir in Verse

SHOLEH WOLPÉ

The University of Arkansas Press

Fayetteville

2022

Copyright © 2022 by Sholeh Wolpé. All rights reserved. No part of this book should be used or reproduced in any manner without prior permission in writing from the University of Arkansas Press or as expressly permitted by law.

ISBN: 978-1-68226-198-9

eISBN: 978-1-61075-765-2

26    25    24    23    22      5    4    3    2    1

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by Liz Lester

Line drawings by Edvarda A. Braanaas (www.edvarda.art)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file at the Library of Congress

For my love, Eddie

The abacus is an instrument of remembering.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

۱. Color of Loss

۲. This Coffin

۳. The World Grows Blackthorn Walls

۴. Please Stop

۵. (Un) Lovers

۶. Pink

۷. Faith

۸. Honeymoon among Sargassum

۹. Un-Blinking Eyes

١٠. The Tally

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude to the following publications where versions of these poems have appeared:

JOURNALS

Poetry London, Ambit Magazine, Consequence Magazine, The Chattahoochee Review, The Markaz Review, The Punch Magazine, Speak: The Magazine, Enchanted Verses Literary Review, Catamaran, National Poetry Library, UK, Patrik, Protrepsis: Revista de Filosofía, Mexico, Terrain: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Levure Littéraire, and Guernica: A Magazine of Arts and Global Politics.

ANTHOLOGIES

The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, edited by Marguerite Richards (Penguin Random House SEA, 2020); Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, edited by Annie Finch (Haymarket Books, 2020); The Heart of a Stranger, edited by André Naffis-Sahely (Pushkin Press, 2019); Dear America, edited by Simmons Buntin, Elizabeth Dodd, and Derek Sheffield (Trinity University Press, 2020); Ink Knows No Borders, edited by Patrice Vicchione and Alyssa Rayond (Seven Stories Press, 2019); The Same Gate: A Collection of Writing in the Spirit of Rumi, edited