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

by Leonard Lewisohn and Robert Bly

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061138843
• ISBN13: 9780061138843
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Stretch your mind

As a white male growing up in Minnesota I would not ordinarily be exposed to Hafez poetry. Fortunately we have Robert Bly. Another wonderful set of translations. These poems stretch me. I don't get them all but I'm sure glad I've read them. Robert Bly's a master at turning something foreign into something accessible.

Angels knocking at your door.

While the book refers to angels knocking at the tavern door- you and an I, at least potentially, are regulars at such a tavern. Thus the angels are knocking at our door, and Rumi's poetry is knocking at the door of our hearts. Having read a number of books about Rumi before, I was pleased to find some poems in translation that I had not read before. I am sure that the sense of wonder and joy I get from good translations of Rumi, as if he were right in the room with me and speaking to me, contributed to my sense that the book could have been longer. More poems! Let me drink from that wine goblet again! I noted that the authors were quite rigorous in their scholarship and in their approach to translation. While it is true that the original words in Farsi may have layers of meaning, alternative meanings, and may have cultural, spiritual and historical references the reader who is not familiar with Rumi's world may not perceive, I also feel it is possible to convey the essence of Rumi in English. I believe that has been accomplished here. The only thing that would have improved this book for me would have been to have the poems in their original language on the facing pages.