Month

Archives: poetry

Spirit and Sensuality in the mystical Sufi poetry of Rumi

By Nesreen Akhtarkhavari and Anthony A. Lee, Translators | (Informed Comment) | - - The poems of Rumi, the thirteenth-century teacher, scholar, and poet known simply as Mowlana in the Muslim world,…

Iran: Poet of Gender Discrimination flees Lashes, 11.5 Year Sentence

By Golnaz Esfandiari | ( RFE/RL ) | - - To get her first book of poetry past the Iranian censor, Fatemeh Ekhtesari did what other Iranian writers often have to do:…

How Persian Literature shaped the culture of Iran and India

Sunil Sharma interviewed by Maryam Kamali | ( Iranian Medieval History) Sunil Sharma is the Associate Professor of Persianate and Comparative Literature at Boston University’s Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature…

Hip-Hop Hijabis: Spitting Rhymes About Being Muslim And Female

AJ+ | - "Hip-hop is a male-dominated arena. In California, a hip-hop collective of Muslim women are challenging stereotypes about being Muslim, and women, through their lyrics." AJ+: "Hip-Hop Hijabis: Spitting Rhymes…

Fearing NSA, Writers in USA and Worldwide Avoiding controversy, keyword Searches

PEN America | "Global Chilling" PEN America writes: "Global Chilling: The Impact of Mass Surveillance on International Writers is a new report demonstrating the damaging impact of surveillance by the United States…

Halloween Poetry: W. B. Yeats, “All Souls’ Night”

All Souls' Night By W.B. Yeats Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell And many a lesser bell sound through the room; And it is All Souls' Night. And two…

“In your Wild Dreams, what are you Looking for?” Rubaiyat of Jalalu’d-Din Rumi

Courtesy Anthony A. Lee, here are four poems from his and the late Amin Banani's translation of the quatrains of the great Sufi mystic Mevlana Jalalu'd-Din Rumi: Jalalu'd-Din Rumi, 53 Secrets from…

Maya Angelou: ‘Still I Rise’ (video)

Poet Maya Angelou dies at 86. Maya Angelou reads 'Still I Rise'

The Romantics and the Orient: What English Poetry owes to the Middle East

(By Samar Attar) Many times I have asked myself how can I concentrate on the British Romantic Poets when people in Syria, the country of my birth, have been killing each other…

Pakistani Sufi Anthem: Jhule Lal Dam Mast Qalandar by Nusrat Fateh Ali

Qawwali is the South Asian Muslim equivalent of African-American Gospel music. This particular song celebrates the thirteenth-century Sindhi mystic, Sayyid `Uthman Marwandi, known as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (1177 – 1274 AD), a…

False Dawn: The 35th Anniversary of Iranian Revolution

(By Farhang Jahanpour) The Iranian revolution succeeded exactly 35 years ago this week. After 37 years of rule, Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, never to return. His nemesis,…

Omar Khayyam (497): “You’re beast and demon, angel, human being”

You who distill within you the whole world, attend to this voice from the realm beyond: You're beast, and demon, angel, human being; whatever you show forth, you are that thing. Translated…

Bringing medieval Persian verse to the West: Dick Davis Interview

PBS Newshour's Jeff Brown interviews Dick Davis, among the foremost Persian scholars and translators of our time, on the delights and glories of Persian poetry. Davis is the translator of Faces of…

Tagore’s “The New Year” (Poem of the Day)

(By Rabindranath Tagore) The New Year LIKE FRUIT, shaken free by an impatient wind from the veils of its mother flower, thou comest, New Year, whirling in a frantic dance amid the…

Coleridge, Kubla Khan (Poem of the Day)

(By Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless…

Walt Whitman’s “Salut au Monde” (Poem of the Day)

(By Walt Whitman) "Salut au Monde" [Greeting to the World: from Leaves of Grass, 1856] 1 O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such join’d unended…

Omar Khayyam (162) “Be happy, since once you’re upset it goes on forever”

Be happy, since once you're upset it goes on forever-- as stars move into conjunction in the sky, it will go on. The brick they will one day mold from your clay will…

Omar Khayyam (259) “Have some wine, since no one is given a long life”

The revolving sky, which has never revealed any mysteries, has brutally crushed a thousand innocents. Have some wine, since no one is given a long life and once people have left this…

Omar Khayyam (458) “Be happy in this fleeting moment”

Since you can't comprehend the mysteries, why wallow uselessly in grief? Since you 're not going to get your way, be happy in this fleeting moment for which you exist. Translated by Juan…

Omar Khayyam (484) “Summer’s new warmth has melted memories of last December”

You're fast on your feet, server, and dawn is breaking. Let's have another song, and bring more wine! For summer's new warmth has melted memories of last December, and of the hundred…