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I burn anything that comes near
Be aware
for I have become love."
Mosavat, whose poetry also includes The Heart Whisperer, opens this compilation with a tribute to his parents but primarily his mother, whom he credits for his poetic pursuits. Each poem is accompanied by his mother’s handwritten calligraphy of beloved Persian poets. The untitled poems can be perceived as one long running poem that challenges readers to be a wild heart, uncaged, and unstoppable in its path to “smelling every flower on the path.”
As the poetry progresses, the teardrop in the title seemingly juxtaposes teardrops of jubilation and unhindered, pure love with the tempestuous teardrops of a heart in ruins. Mosavat has a knack for using metaphors to paint a scintillating image in the reader’s mind of love, whether it’s digging in the earth “to plant something sweet” or portraying love as a candle being lit by another candle. Interestingly, Mosavat emphasizes the importance of loving one’s self completely before giving that love to another. Using a consistent repetitive pattern and the imagery of fire and rain, the poet seeks to unify love with compassion. In fact, he pairs them up as a form of yoga, as the reader will “breathe in love, breathe out compassion.”
Love is portrayed through many similes, illuminating the reader’s mind with comparisons that include but are not limited to love being like a dance, song, a hurricane, and “a dawn in my heart.” To know love, the poet suggests, is to know life in its entirety. In one particular poem, the premise links love to teardrops of inspiration, stressing that one does not need a rose garden in the physical form but that roses “you have never seen before” can be found from within. Mosavat’s poetry travels to the inner corridors of emotion with an honesty and authenticity that poetry aficionados will find gratifying.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review