Although he is not well known in the West and only one of his works, a children's book, has been translated into English, Yushij is important in any listing of Persian writers. As one of the founders of the shi'r-i naw (new poetry) movement, he has influenced succeeding generations of Persian poets. Forough Farrokhzad, for example, has acknowledged his impact on her own development as a poet.
Yushij was born in Yush, a town in Mazandaran Province on the Caspian Sea. Politically active, he believed social and political change was a necessity for Iran and was a member of Iran's Tudeh (Communist) party. His period of great literary production was in the 1920s and 1930s. Reza Baraheni, himself a poet as well as a literary critic, has said: "Nima gave a multi-sided dimension to the construction of Persian poetry; a construction in content, . . . in the subjective form of a complete poem and . . . in the apparent form. New poetry or the poetry of Nima was formed by these three [things] . . . ."
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