About

This book is a collection of fascinating common Persian poetic themes, conveying universally accepted messages, from the glorious eras of Persian poetry, taking the reader through centuries of the subtle poetic thoughts of Persian dignitaries, including both male and female poets, philosophers, and artists such as musicians, painters and calligraphers, as well as talented ordinary people in rare cases, who chose to express their overall view of world and life in a poetic manner. 

The purpose of a large portion of Persian poetry, as prescribed by the wise, is to make us question our beliefs, the legitimacy of our ideals, and the endless paradox' that life presents. It truly fits the definition of poetry as provided by a 19th Century English poet and cultural critic, namely Mathew Arnold: “Poetry is at bottom, a criticism of life”. Further, as once said by Thomas Stearns Eliot, the American poet and literary critic that: “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood”, even in most cases of complicated Persian poetry, the average reader gets the impression that the overall theme of the poem is received despite the exact meaning of a word or two may not be well understood.

Persian literature enjoys countless popular poetic themes, the concepts that have proved enduring over centuries. Since most of the times, a poet does not strictly bound oneself to a single theme in a poem, in the present book efforts were made to single-out a specific verse of a poem which independently carries the relevant theme. Moreover, in some cases, other aspects and even an ironically opposite perspective of a certain main-theme have been expressed by another poet who happened to have a totally and interestingly different point of view regarding that very specific theme.