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Metakse
	Metakse (1926 - )	Feminist poet and translator from Artik, who has collaborated with a wide range of Eastern European and Russian poets, translating and introducing their works to the Armenian literary scene.

Metakse (Poghosian) was born in 1926 in Artik. She lost her father at the age of two, and after her mother’s remarriage she was sent to a boarding school in Gyumri. She studied at Yerevan’s Pedagogical Institute and graduated from M. Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow. In order to support herself in Moscow, she worked as a waitress at the famous Ararat restaurant, and regularly attended Mikhail Svetlov’s poetry seminars. After graduation she worked as a mariner on the ship “Lipetsk” and traveled to Egypt and Albania. In 1959 Metakse returned to Yerevan. Her first volume of poems, “Jahelutiun” (Youth), was published in 1957; since then she has authored over a dozen books. She has served on the Advisory Board of the Writer’s Union since 1962 and her poetry has been translated into Bulgarian, English, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Serbian, Spanish and other languages. Metakse has also translated from Bella Akhmadulina, Tudor Argezi, Miroslav Valek, Desanka Maksimovich, Dumitru M. Ion, Diana Der Hovanessian and others into Armenian. She currently resides in Yerevan with her only daughter.

Books
Artsunknere chen tseranum [Tears Don't Age] Yerevan, Khorhrdayin Grogh, 1990.
Astso tesilk [A Vision of God]. Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2003.
Chakatagir [Fate]
Hazar u mi ser [A Thousand and One Loves] Moscow: SovPis, 1986.
Hovhannes Mkrtich [John Baptist]. Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2003.
Hovhannes Shiraze im husherum [Hovhannes Shiraz in My Memories] Yerevan, 2002.
Kianki grkum [Embraced With Life] Moscow: SovPis, 1975.
Knoj sirt [A Woman's Heart]
Jahelutiun [Youth]. Yerevan, 1957.
Lernere lalis en garnane [Mountains Weep in Springtime]
Nvirum [Dedication]
Shamiram. Yerevan: Nairi, 1995.
Siro Talisman [Talisman of Love] Yerevan: Sovetakan Grogh, 1983.
Urishi artsunknere [Someone Else's Tears]
Zguish, sirt e [Careful, It's a Heart] Yerevan: Hayastan, 1974.

FOR MEN ONLY   Translated from the Armenian by Diana Der-Hovanessian. First published in Graham House Review (No. 19, Winter 1995/1996).

ENVY (Yeranee te) Translated from the Armenian by Diana Der-Hovanessian (from AIWA's forthcoming Anthology of Armenian Women's Poetry).

Men, what’s your beef   about us anyway?   Haven’t you learned   how to make love yet   in all these years?   Undressing a woman   is a delicate art, roughnecks.   You can’t just let   your fingers move like   creeping bugs. No.   You have to have a strategy   against each buttonhole.   You have to whisper   to each earring.   You must enflame the hairpins.   And you have to gather   a bouquet from   the flowers of a nightdress.   Tenderly. And don’t pick   those flowers out of duty.   But because you want   every single one.

I envy the clikng of the shirt you wear   that, even in daylight, can be indiscreet   and trace your torso's outline and dare   to wrinkle conquetishly with pagan heat.   Imagine envying an innate thing,   and losing my senses like a flaming wing   of a meteor. Does a shirt have feelings or soul   that I die to hold what it can hold?      What does it care that a woman desires   to wash it because it has felt the fires   of your body and wants to inhale   the warmth of the collar, even the stale   earhtly memory of wear and waeve   of a sleeve?   What does it care that I envy the clasp   of its pearly buttons that measure the time   of our short lives with their upward climb,   dressing and undressing you, unasked,   leaning against your beating heart,   while I who envied no other's lot   stand silent, apart and jealous of cloth.

Sources: The above information is compiled by Shushan Avagyan, who translated the biographical and other information provided by Metakse. Avagyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, she is currently working on her doctorate in English and Women’s Studies, and is the recipient of Dalkey Archive Press fellowship at the Illinois State University. She can be reached at savagya@ilstu.edu. The poem on Envy was sumbitted by Diana Der-Hovanessian. It is reprinted from AIWA's forthcoming Anthology of Armenian Women's Poetry.