The young man who was put on trial on Saturday and referred to as O. M. is a poet (Omid Montazeri) who is now referred to as an Ashoura Day disturber.  His defense speech was broadcast on the Islamic Republic television while he was at home on Ashoura Day.

Omid is an able poet who has published a book discussing his views on contemporary Iranian poetry.  

Omid Montazeri writes, “Poetry is not about grandiloquence sentences; nor about simile and metaphor and alliteration.  I think that poetry is in the viewpoint of the poet.  When he stares at daily events.  When he takes the hand of the child and writes … I believe that the power of poem does not lie in pompous and grand words that dilute the connection to the reader … The prescribed rules of forms of expression contain a rigidity that the anarchy of modern mind and language does not tolerate.  Literature is not the language of distinction and separation; it is the language of communication, intertwined with humanly understanding and being.  I believe in poetry as such, not as an unlikely imagination and not as the faraway bird.

That is how I choose, believable words and familiar scenes; but a view farther than the image of being, the struggle of being or not being and perhaps in the metaphysical meaning of daily life.  But a poet is not a philosopher, nor is poetry the grazing field of philosophy.  I do not know what philosophy is, yet I do know what poetry is…”

Below is one of Omid Montazeri’s poems.  His father was among the political prisoners executed in 1988, and his mother is currently behind bars too.

Today
I didn’t eat breakfast
I didn’t write a poem
And the tea boiling on the stove
Begins to smell like a lagoon
I miss the cold days
The window bothers me
And I continue to await you…;

Omid Montazeri is also a relative of Sohrab Erabi, who was among the first protesters killed after the election.