Hmayeak Shems A Poet of Pure Spirit

This book presents the life and writings of Armenian poet Hmayeak Shems (1896-1952). The Armenian Genocide of 1915 devastated Shems, who lost his family and home and wandered for years in exile. Yet from debilitating isolation, Shems found a lyrical mastery of Armenian identity and modern spirit. Illuminated by his poetry, this biography chronicles his travels, encounters, and thought to reveal a more compelling and complete portrait of Shems than previously known.

Vah Baladouni has contributed to a number of Middle Eastern Armenian literary periodicals, and translated the poetry and prose of writers such as Shakespeare, Shelley, and Wilde into Armenian in Translations (1973). He compiled and edited Hmayeak Shems: entir Erker [Hmayeak Shems: Select Works] (1994); translated (with John Gery) Shems's prose poems into English, For the House of Torkom (1999); and helped publish several of Shems's works in Erevan, Armenia, (2001-2004). John Gery has published five volumes of poetry, most recently A Gallery of Ghosts (2008), and has written extensively on modern and contemporary poetry, including the books Contemporary American Poetry and Nuclear Annihilation: Ways of Nothingness (1996) and (with others) In Venice and in the Veneto with Ezra Pound (2007). He has co-translated works from Serbian, Chinese, Armenian, and French, is professor of literature and creative writing at the University of New Orleans, and directs the Ezra Pound Center for Literature at Brunnenburg, Italy.