Deviation in Persian Free verse: the case of Ahmad Shāmlū, Manūchehr Ātashi, Seyed Ali Mūsavi Garmārūdi, Seyed Hassan Hosseini, Bijan Najdi, Shams Langrūdi

As a fundamental element in the poetic system, deviation is the most effective form of defamiliarization and linguistic foregrounding. It disrupts the conventional structural rules of poem and thus generates a wide range of thematic, formal and linguistic variations within poetry. In Persian free verse which lacks meter and rhyme, poets have widely used deviation to foreground and enhance their poetic language. The current descriptive-analytical research, using a library method, examines deviation in the works of six free verse poets based on Geoffrey Leech’s formalist approach. The study highlights the impact of this approach on distinguishing the language and form of poem. The frequency of various types of deviation by these poets differs according to their ideational and literary experience. Poets like Shāmlū, Mūsavi Garmārūdi and Seyed Hasan Hosseini have used semantic, lexical, orthographic and literary deviations to create distinct and independent styles from their predecessors, but poets like Ātashi, Najdi and Shams Langrūdi have mainly paid attention to linguistic and literary deviations. The present research, identifying instances of deviations, examines the type and frequency of deviation in Persian free verse as well.