The Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz

A Reading and Lecture by Prof. Dick Davis April 17, 2019

Currently working on a selection of poems by three 14th century Persian poets—Hafez, Obeyd-e Zakani, and Jahan Khatun—Prof. Davis will discuss the details and challenges of his forthcoming book, The Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (Mage, December 2009) as well as the intriguing relationship between these three contemporary poets from Shiraz who almost certainly knew one another personally. Reciting his translations of select pieces by Hafez and Obayd-e Zakani, Prof. Davis will concentrate mostly on the work of the poet-princess Jahan Khatun, the only Persian medieval woman poet whose complete works has come down to us.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London, Dick Davis is currently Professor of Persian and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University. A noted poet in his own right, he is widely considered the greatest translator of Persian poetry, having translated such classics as Attar’s The Conference of the Birds with Afkham Darbandi (1984), The Legend of Seyavash from the Shahnameh (1992), the abridged translation of the Shahnameh in three volumes (1997, 2000, 2004), and Gorgani’s Vis and Ramin (2008).

Location: The Nour Foundation Gallery
322 West 108th Street, New York, NY

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