ARI Literature Foundation has published Tenny Arlen’s collection of poems, Saying with Passion Why I Am Here. The poems reveal a powerful and creative voice, able to give expression to subtleties of human emotion and experience. She does not shy away from confronting life’s most gripping existential questions or entering the most deep and inner recesses of the self.
Saying with Passion Why I Am Here, Western Armenian, 2021, 120 p., hard cover, 978-9939-9254-8-6/ paperback, 978-9939-9244-3-4
About the author
Tenny was born and raised in California far removed from any Armenian community. She began her undergraduate studies at UCLA without prior knowledge of Armenian. There, she took courses in Western Armenian language and literature for two years, and, already possessing exceptional poetic talent, soon began to create in Armenian. This collection of poems was written about 15-20 months after beginning Armenian language studies. In 2013 she graduated from UCLA, in 2015, she was admitted into University of Michigan’s doctoral program in Comparative Literature with a plan to study French and Armenian symbolist poetry, but she passed away in a car accident before beginning the program. During the last months of her life, she adopted a new name, Soghovmé, as a symbol of her Armenian and poetic identity.