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

About the Authors

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 lived 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.

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door

Thirty Poems of HafezBy Robert Bly

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Robert Bly
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061138843

How Blame Has Been Helpful

We are drunken ecstatics who have let our hearts
Go to the wild. We are musty scholars
Of love, and old friends of the wine cup.

People have aimed the arrow of guilt a hundred times
In our direction. With the help of our Darling?s eyebrow,
Blame has been a blessing, and has opened all our work.

Oh, dark-spotted flower, you endured pain all night,
Waiting for the wine of dawn; I am that poppy
That was born with the burning spot of suffering.

If our Zoroastrian master has become disgusted
With our way of repentance, tell him, Go ahead,
Strain the wine. We are standing here with our heads down.

It is through you that our work goes on at all;
Oh, teacher of the way, please throw us a glance.
Let?s be clear about it; we have fallen off the path.

Don?t imagine us to be like the tulip, who is preoccupied
With its goblet shape; rather look at the dark
Spot of grief we have set on our scorched hearts.

"Hafez," you say, "what about all your intriguing colors
And ingenious fantasies?" Don?t take our language seriously.
We are a clean slate on which nothing has been written.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Doorby Robert Bly Copyright © 2009 by Robert Bly. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

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