The Mirror of My Heart, Dick Davis
The Mirror of My Heart, Dick Davis
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The Mirror of My Heart
A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women

Author: Dick Davis

Narrator: Dick Davis, Mozhan Marnò, Tala Ashe, Serena Manteghi

Unabridged: 6 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 02/09/2021

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

An anthology of verse by women poets writing in Persian, most of whom have never been translated into English before, from acclaimed scholar and translator Dick Davis.

The Mirror of My Heart is a unique and captivating collection of eighty-three Persian women poets, many of whom wrote anonymously or were punished for their outspokenness. One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe'eh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from society's social extremes--many were princesses, some were entertainers, but many were wives and daughters who wrote simply for their own entertainment, and they were active in many different countries - Iran, India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. From Rabe'eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, the women poets found in The Mirror of My Heart write across the millennium on such universal topics as marriage, children, political climate, death, and emancipation, recreating life from hundreds of years ago that is strikingly similar to our own today and giving insight into their experiences as women throughout different points of Persian history. The volume is introduced and translated by Dick Davis, a scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right.

*This audiobook includes a PDF that contains notes from the book.

About The Author

Dick Davis is a translator, a poet, and a scholar of Persian literature who has published more than 20 books. He is currently a professor of Persian at Ohio State University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His translations from Persian include The Lion and the ThroneFathers and Sons, and Sunset of Empire: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, vols. I, II, III.Mozhan Marnò has appeared in such films as The Stoning of Soraya M., Traitor, and Charlie Wilson’s War, and on such television programs as House of Cards, The Blacklist, Hung, The Mentalist, Bones, and Medium.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Brian on July 15, 2022

Dick Davis is perhaps the world’s greatest translator of Persian classics into English, capturing the nuance, beat, rhyme, and passion in a way that does justice. In this volume he showcases the female side of a civilization that has prized poetry like no other. He selects great poems by about 85 wo......more

Goodreads review by Sahel's on August 30, 2021

When I read Dick Davis's translations, I don't just learn about literature, but history, art, folktales, and pop-culture in Iran! I really enjoyed reading this anthology. I'm not a reader who deliberately picks up a poetry book or craves it. I usually read prose. I also think reading poetry in Farsi......more

Goodreads review by Alana on July 02, 2023

more like a thousand years of poetry by bad bitches......more

Goodreads review by Denise on January 11, 2022

A wonderfull anthology of Persian poetry by women. Beginning from the medieval period and arriving to the present day we hear women sing about love, desparation, emancipation, anger and sometimes hope. We travel from the mythical gardens of Persia to the harsh reality of present day Iran. Their voic......more

Goodreads review by Jared on August 29, 2023

I picked up this book when I started reading about Iran after the horrible death of Mahsa Jina Amini in September 2022, and the protests that followed. What's going on there is incredibly heartbreaking, and I wanted to read books by Iranian authors to better understand the situation. This is one of......more


Quotes

“In every respect, The Mirror of My Heart is outstanding. Reading it one discovers a whole tradition of love poetry, epigram and elegy, movingly brought into English and then beautifully printed and bound by Washington’s own Mage Publishers. Most important now, this anthology reminds us how much we all share the same joys, the same sorrows.”
­­–Michael Dirda, The Washington Post