The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez - Softcover

Bly, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061138843 ISBN 13: 9780061138843

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2009

Synopsis

One of our most acclaimed poets brings the work of the great Persian mystic and poet, Hafez, to a new audience. There is no poet in our tradition who carries the amount of admiration and devotion that the Persians have for Hafez. Children learn to sing Hafez poems in the third grade, and almost every family has a copy of the collected Hafez on the dining room table. Robert Bly and the great Islamic scholar Leonard Lewisohn have worked for 15 years on this book of Hafez, the first that carries into English his nimbleness, his outrageous humor, his defenses of the private life in the face of the fundamentalists, and the joy of his love poems. He writes in the ghazal form, one of the greatest inventions in the history of poetry.This is Rumi’s wild younger brother, now brought into an English that makes his genius visible.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The great Persian poet Hafez is so beloved in Iran that almost every family there keeps his Divan close at hand. For some fifteen years, esteemed American poet and author Robert Bly has worked with the great Islamic scholar Leonard Lewisohn to produce this translation, which for the first time captures Hafez's nimbleness, his fierce humor, his astonishing range of thought, and his delight in love—enabling English speakers to fully appreciate the true genius of this master of the ghazal form, one of the greatest inventions in the history of poetry.

About the Author:

Robert Bly's books of poetry include The Night Abraham Called to the Stars and My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy. His awards include the National Book Award for poetry and two Guggenheims. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Dr. Leonard Lewisohn is Lecturer in Persian and the Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Classical Persian and Sufi Literature at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter in England.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0061138843
• ISBN 13: 9780061138843
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128