Persian Poems (Everyman's Library POCKET POETS)

A great classic Persian Poetry Anthology in a pocket-side size hardback.In this anthology of classical Persian poetry we have 7 poets: Omar, Sanai, Attar, Rumi, Saadi, Hafez and Jami from the eleven to fourteen century and translated by various well-known translators : Edward Fitzgerald: Coleman Barks; A.J.Arberry; R.A. Nicholson; Mirza Aqil-Hussain; William Jones; E. H. Palmer; W. Leaf; Gertrude Bell; Elizabeth Gray and Richard Le Gallienne. So here, you have the great classic 'the Ruba'iyat", a Victorian and Edwardian best-seller, the mystical "sufi" verses of Attar, Rumi or Hafez, great favourites of present American female singers... Finally the splendid selection by Peter Washington will be treasured by the Everyman Pocket Poets Library, no bad poems or poets.

An easy to read introduction to a new world.

I bought this to try to expand my experience of poetry, as I knew nothing about Persian poets apart from the Rubaiyat (which also features here). I feel a bit unsure about reviewing this, as I had expected to find considerable beauty in Persian poetry. To be fair, some of the poems are very "poetically" translated, but a lot of the other translators appear to have been satisfied with a straight translation of the words, without any attempt to reproduce what I assume was the music of the original language, so a lot of it could have been written as prose. Unfortunately, not knowing the original I can't really judge, but translators of some foreign language poetry seem to manage to stay close to the originals without losing the "music" (such as J.B. Leishman's translations of Rilke in the Everyman edition.) It takes a poet to translate poetry successfully, and as it is, I don't find these poems quite as enjoyable as I had hoped. Perhaps I expected too much! Still a very nice edition, as with all Everyman books.

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BOOK.

to celebrate One World Week by including poetry from many different sources (England, Scotland, Wales, Zimbabwe, and Persia for example) to be read to a mixed audience, not only as regards religion and heritage but also humour, eg frequent references to red wine.A pity the wish to rhyme distorted some of the refrains even to the point of rendering some verse hard to understand but many of the metaphors were striking and the aphorisms quite telling. Subjects were nicely varied especially the love poems, and - all in all -it was well worth reading or dipping into.