Iranian Poets   Nima Yooshij Nima Yooshij: (1897-1959) Ali Esfandiari, whose pen name is Nima Yooshij, is the pioneer in composing contemporary poems known as "Free Verse". He was born in 1897, in Yoosh, Mazandaran Province. His father was a brave farmer who earned his living mostly from husbandry. That is why Nima spent his childhood, among shepherds in beautiful farms and forests away from the city life. He came to Tehran at the age of 12 to enroll in St Louis French School, where not only he learnt French perfectly, but also got well acquainted with the European literature, the French in particular. His poetry, and consequently contemporary poetry, was drastically impressed by the very same acquaintance. He admits that he did not make very good grades at school. "I was (only) skillful at leaping and jumping down the wall to run away from school", he once said. Actually like other geniuses he did not attach much significance to academic education. Encouraged by Nezam-Vafa, a teacher and poet, he spends most of his time reading poetry and starts composing poems. His first published poem (ghasideh) is "the Pale Tale". This poem indicates both his apprenticeship, and his creativity. In the above poem he tells the agonizing story of his own life and partially reveals his social ideas.     His next poems respectively were "Oh Night", "Tale" and his most famous work "Ghoghnoos or Phoenix". Pioneering the contemporary poetry started with the composition of Phoenix. The Persian Free Verse (Sher-e Noe) was born by this piece. Afssaneh, on the other hand is a classic romantic poem. The style of this poem is that of a drama.The freshness and dynamism of his approach as well as a dramatic style coped with enthusiasm of this poem complies with its romantic theme. In this collection the poet expresses his own poetic and sensational modes. The tenor of Afssaneh is the tragic story of Nima's own anguish expressed in a new method full of simile and metaphor. He uses his imagination to express the story of his own life. It is the true story of a sensational poet suffering from the life adversities, bored from the city life, trying to escape from a city full of fraudulence and deceit and to lose himself in his poetic imaginations. What is initially noticed in Nima's poems is his new approach to nature and the world. Another point encountered in his poems are his social and economic ideas. Nima's love for nature is clearly demonstrated in his work.     In his real life he is very fond of nature i.e. forests, and mountains. He very much misses the village life while hating the unhealthy polluted city life, and this fact is reflected in his poems. Actually, his attention at and detailed description of nature i.e. plants, and animals is similar to what is seen in the Western literature. The novelty that Nima has introduced to the Persian literature is considered the most significant aspect of his style. He introduced an innovation in the music of a poem, by replacing the rhymes in every hemistich. Although he considers the rhythm and rhyme useful in poetry, he believes that a poet must not attach the priority to them. According to Nima, it is the spirit, the theme, the tune and the natural exigency of a poem that come first. Nima impresses most of the composers of modern poems. It is an undeniable fact that the contemporary poetry is influenced by him. His other poems are "A Soldier's Family", "My Poem", "Night City-Morning City" and "Ghalm-Andaz", some of which have been translated into English, French, Russian and Arabic. Nima died of pneumonia in 1959 in Tehran.