{"product_id":"the-mirror-of-my-heart-a-thousand-years-of-persian-poetry-by-women","title":"The Mirror Of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women","description":"\u003cp\u003eI gaze into the mirror of my heart  \/ And though its me who looks  its you I see. So speaks one of the many distinctive voices in this new anthology of verse by women poets writing in Persian  most of whom have never been translated into English before; this is especially true of the pre-modern poets  such as the unnamed author of the lines above  known simply as the \"daughter of Salar\" or \"the woman from Esfahan.\" 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 societys social extremes. Many were princesses  a good number were hired entertainers of one kind or another  and they were active in many different countries Iran of course  but also India  Afghanistan  and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan  Turkmenistan  and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly  a lot of their poetry sounds like that of their male counterparts  but a lot doesnt; there are distinctively bawdy and flirtatious poems by medieval women poets  poems from virtually every era in which the poet complains about her husband (sometimes light-heartedly  sometimes with poignant seriousness)  touching poems on the death of a child  and many epigrams centered on little details that bring a life from hundreds of years ago vividly before our eyes. In the nineteenth century we begin to see political poems  often very angry ones  by women demanding both the independence of Middle-Eastern countries from Western governments and women s emancipation.Perhaps the most personal and intensely emotional poems are those of the last hundred years  in which we see local sensibilities rooted in a millennium of literary and social tradition responding to  and embracing or rejecting  the myriad multi-cultural strands that make up the modern world. The Mirror of My Heart is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis  an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. In his introduction he provides fascinating background detail on Persian poetry written by women through the ages  including common themes and motifs and a brief overview of Iranian history showing how women poets have been affected by the changing dynasties. From Rabeeh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first  each of the eighty-four poets in this volume is introduced in a short biographical note  while explanatory notes give further insight into the poems themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44969000206389,"sku":"ByrdShop_1949445054","price":225.52,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781949445053.jpg?v=1770651908","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-mirror-of-my-heart-a-thousand-years-of-persian-poetry-by-women","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}