“The same themes that had interested me in Milan and Tehran showed up in my work in Minneapolis (1962-64), except that instead of Farhad, whom few would know in America, I chose the ‘Poet’ as a subject. The poet was either alone or alongside his beloved.

“In my imagination, he was the freest of all humankind. I consider him to be like birds in the sky, belonging everywhere. Sometimes I alternated themes, from the poet to the ‘Prophet’. But while the prophet, like the poet, was superior to the rest of humanity, he could not escape the yoke of obligation, and nothing symbolised such obligation better than the lock, which I would often hang from his body.

“In terms of form, these sculptures were little more than a few cylinders and cubes stacked atop one another. But the holes I pierced through them, and the writing I interspersed on the surfaces, distinguished them from conventional geometric shapes. Inspired by the idea that I was drawing closer to the unification of poetry and architecture, a combination I always aspired to, I leaned toward geometric shapes and architectural forms and away from soft lines and rounded volumes.”

Parviz Tanavoli, in Sherrill, ed., Works of Parviz Tanavoli, vol. 6, Poet (2014)