The poems in Hasan Alizadeb’s House Arrest are translated and introduced by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould. What I got out of them was above all streams of vivid and expressive images. Like [Kit] Fan, Alizadeh weaves together strands from different cultural traditions. Some of his poems relate to Iranian public life, some to the Old and New Testaments or Greek and Roman mythology, some apparently to the personal experience of the poet himself. The introduction tells us that he started as a short story writer. His poems usually do involve story but their fundamental impulse is lyrical. Taking the overall narrative arc for granted, they tend to present one moment within it in an extremely vivid way, suggesting an emotion or complex of emotions.