This little gem of a chap book showed up at my door recently, packed full of other ephemera and goodies from Thornwillow’s Dispatch subscription program.
It’s always a joy to see the return address of a press on a box!
I’m really looking forward to reading this one, as I’ve been wanting to read more and learn more about mystic poets like Hafiz, Attar, and Rumi. I had no idea that people used Hafiz to tell the future and guide them through life like other might use the reading of tea leaves and tarot cards. In fact, I learned from Steve Zeitlin’s blogpost interviewing Muradi about this tradition around Hafiz that his sobriquet or nickname is lesān-al-ḡayb, or The Tongue of the Unseen.
While I’m not currently a subscriber to the Thornwillow Dispatch, my love of translation, poetry, and the aforementioned intention regarding Hafiz made this a ‘must have’. In reading about Muradi’s work on this book, I was intrigued, as always, by her comments on the translatability of Hafiz. Makes me wish I could read in all languages. But thank goodness for the efforts and dedication to all the translators out there who bring world literature to those of us who can only read in one or a few languages.
And I was especially pleased to see the original Persian included in the text!
I believe this book is still available from the press here, where you can also find a link for subscribing to the Thornwillow Dispatch. (I’m trying to ‘unsee’ that they are publishing James Joyce’s The Dead next month. But that’s another problem I’ll have to ask Hafiz about…)
