The Feast of Icarus: Lyrical Essays (1984); The Wan-
ton Summer Air (1982); and Stills (1989). Hazo has
written numerous essays and nonfiction books in-
cluding The Rest Is Prose (1989) and The Power of
Less: Poetry and Public Speech (2005). In his essays,
Hazo has been very vocal in his criticism of the
Bush administration in the Middle East.
Hazo has also been active as a playwright. Until
I’m Not Here Anymore was performed at the Ful-
ton Theater, Pittsburgh, in l992 and subsequently
filmed and broadcast on PBS. Other plays include
Solos, performed at the Carnegie Lecture Hall,
Pittsburgh, in 1994; Feather, performed at Carnegie
Lecture Hall and other venues, 1996; Mano a Mano,
a flamenco drama written for the Carlota Santana
Spanish Dance Company and performed at Duke
University in 2001 and subsequently at the Joyce
Theater in Manhattan. Hazo is presently working
on a play called Watching Fire, Watching Rain.
Notable among his awards are a Phi Beta Kappa
Honorary Membership (1976), the Hazlett Award
for Excellence in Literature (1986), the Forbes
Medal for Outstanding Cultural Contributions to
Western Pennsylvania (1987), the Pittsburgh Cen-
ter for the Arts Cultural Award (1995), the Maurice
English Award for Poetry (2003), the Griffin Award
for Creative Writing (2004), and nine honorary
doctorates. Hazo continues to live with his wife,
Mary Anne, and son, Samuel R. Hazo, an accom-
plished composer, in his hometown of Pittsburgh,
where he is a Visiting Professor and McAnulty
Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at
Duquesne University.
Bibliography
Poetry and Politics: Nations of the Mind. “Samuel
Hazo.” Available online. URL: http://www.nhwrit-
ersproject.org/poetryandpolitics/samuelhazo.
htm. Accessed May 18, 2006.
Hazo, Samuel. “An Interview with Samuel Hazo” by
David Sokolowski. August 5–6, 1988. Available
online. URL: http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/
ndr8/hazo/interview.html. Accessed September
25, 2006.
Zoghby, Mary D. “The Holy Surprise of Right Now:
Selected and New Poems. Samuel Hazo.” MELUS
23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): Retrieved from the Ebsco
Host, Academic Search Premier database.
Nawar Al-Hassan GolleyHeart’s Desire, The Nahid Rachlin (1995)
Jennifer and Karim Sahary, an average middle-
class couple with one son, Darius, live the Ameri-
can dream in Ohio. After many years of a happy
marriage, Karim begins to feel uncomfortable in
America. A professor of urban planning at a uni-
versity, he feels racism toward him pressing against
his world, especially after the Iran hostage crisis.
Karim begins to withdraw from his wife and wraps
himself in solitude, longing for his family and life
he had neglected in Iran. They return as a family
to Iran, where Jennifer, a commercial artist, is at
first invigorated by the colors and atmosphere of
her husband’s home. As their stay extends in the
house of Karim’s mother, Jennifer begins to feel
claustrophobic and powerless within such a heav-
ily restricted society that is both enthralled by and
belligerent toward America. A move by Aziz, the
matriarch of the family, to take Darius to Qom and
enroll him in a religious school frightens Jennifer
enough to take matters into her own hands. As an
American, she has difficulty negotiating her way
through Iran’s streets and police to take her son
back, but she manages to find her way out of Iran
and back home to the States.
While sometimes compared to Betty Mah-
moody’s Not without My Daughter, a sensational
story about her escape from Iran with her daugh-
ter, NAHID RACHLIN’s novel offers a complex read-
ing of post-1979 Iran from an American woman’s
perspective. Her nuanced understanding of both
Iranian and American lifestyles gives this story an
evenhanded and complex analysis of cross-cultural
marriages. Jennifer’s discomfort in Iran under the
hierarchy of the traditional family is well noted,
as well as her concern for retaining her own voice
within this foreign world.
By presenting a variety of Iranian male charac-
ters, Rachlin avoids the stereotypes of hostile, rigid
Iranian men. Karim, who was paralyzed by his10 4 Heart’s Desire, The