Persian Poetry Resources

 

Learning Persian

Though written with Arabic characters, Persian is an Indo-European language, and not overly difficult to learn. Commercial sites exist at: pimsleur, languagequest, , arthur lynn, multilingingual books, worldlanguage and languageresourceonline

The following provide useful information: easypersian, farrangsara, mylanguage exchange and farsiabad.

Online Persian-English-Persian dictionaries are at kamous, columbia, 1-800 translate, word2word and steingass

Steingass (Asian Educational Services, 2003) is the usually-recommended dictionary in book form, and you will need a decent grammar. E.H. Palmer's Simplified Grammar of Arabic, Persian and Hindustani (1890/2002) covers a lot of ground, but it's probably best to work systematically through A.K.S. Lambton's Persian Grammar (CUP, 1953): not enticing but solid.

Some useful language exchanges: friends abroad, xlingo, mylanguage exchange, polyglot learn language, and lingozone.

Persian Poetry

Persian poetry cannot be appreciated without a deep understanding of Islamic culture, and you may wish to start with general introductions to the history of the area, which is fascinating enough.

For the critical literature generally, try as always the bibliography in the The New Princeton Encyclopedia section on Persian Poetry, E. Browne's A Literary History of Persia(1902-24: the Indian reprint is affordable), A. Schimmel's A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry(1992: good bibliography), and perhaps J.S. Meisami's Medieval Persian Court Poetry (1987) and Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearls (2003: more a specialist's book, with references to recent scholarship), W. Thackston's A Millennium of Classical Persian Poetry (1994), and the listings given on tehran at stanford, columbia and cornell.

Many sites sell books/CDs on Persian art and poetry, including: mazda, audiobooks, iranbooks, arabworldbooks, abebooks, and alibris.

Hafez

Useful listings include hafizonlove, songsofhafiz, bell's translations, far, wisdom of hafez, sufi resources and teachings of hafez.

Jami

Jami, the last great poet in classical Persian, was man of surpassing talents born into the flowering of culture under the Timurid rulers at Herat. Translations of Jami are of mixed quality, but can be found at oldpoetry.

Rumi

Many translations can be found on the internet, some excellent: rumi.org, rumionfire, tearsofllorona, wahiduddin, far, persepolis and iransaga. Books on and by Rumi exist in great profusion, marketed by iranonline, iransaga, bestirantravel, amazon, alibris, fetchbooks, abebooks, isufis, etc. There also exist many Rumi societies, promoting an awareness of the man's work and Sufi teachings: sufi journal, 7rooz, rumi.org, khamush, spiritdimension, tanbur, mevlana society, rumi society. Mystica Music has Rumi's verses translated into Hindi with a flute accompaniment.

Nezami

For literary criticism see: Talatoff and Clinton's The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi : Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric (2001), A. Seyed-Gohrab's A Narration of Love (2003) and the listings given on tehran at stanford, columbia and cornell. Many translations exist, mostly as prose: Mirror of Meanings: jamali, chelkowski, Khosrow and Shirin: globoo, Laila and Majnoun: atkinson, turner, gelpke, Book of Alexander: volta, wilberforce clarke, rogers, and Seven Portraits: martin al-awadhi, richard, wilson and meissami. Books in Persian occasionally appear on abebooks, or sources listed here, but payk-e-farhang and iranbooks are the best sources for Nezami himself.

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