Borrowed Ware: Medieval Persian Epigrams

by Dick Davis (Translator)

In Borrowed Ware, poet and translator Dick Davis brings together a collection of epigrams by poets from the “classic” period of Persian literature. It makes a fascinating introduction to a literature that is little known in the West, and incidentally provides insight into a vanished and extraordinary way of life. Davis’s prodigious scholarship of Persian poetry has enabled him to select a wide range of poems, from both famous and little-known poets. The result is some of the best English translations of Persian poetry ever. Davis has maintained exceptional faithfulness to the original Persian while recasting the poems’ grace and drive in English. The book also contains a lucid and entertaining introduction, and informative notes on each of the sixty-eight poets whose work is included. Each poem is faced by the text in delicate Persian nasta’liq calligraphy by Amir Hossein Tabnak.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

203 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Dick Davis is an English-American poet, university professor, and translator of verse, who is affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry.
Born into a working class family in Portsmouth shortly before the end of World War II, Davis grew up in the Yorkshire fishing village of Withernsea during the 1950s, where an experimental school made it possible for Davis to become the first member of his family to attend university.

Shortly before graduating from Cambridge University, Davis was left heartbroken by the suicide of his schizophrenic brother and decided to begin living and teaching abroad.

After teaching in Greece and Italy, in 1970 Davis fell in love with an Iranian woman, Afkham Darbandi, and decided to live permanently in Tehran during the reign of the last Shah. As a result, he taught English at the University of Tehran, and married Afkham Darbandi, about whom he has since written and published many love poems, in 1974.

After the Islamic Revolution turned Dick and Afkham Davis into refugees, first in the United Kingdom and then in the United States, Davis decided to begin translating many of the greatest masterpieces of both ancient and modern Persian poetry into English. Davis is a vocal opponent of the ruling Shia clergy of Iran and has used his talents as a scholar and literary translator to give a voice to critics and foes of Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia Law from throughout the history of Iranian literature. Despite expressing a fondness for Christian music, Davis has said that his experiences during the Iranian Revolution have made him into an Atheist and that he believes that religion does more harm than good.

Davis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has been called, by The Times Literary Supplement, "our finest translator from Persian." Davis' original poetry has been just as highly praised.

Reviews

[SJ L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borrowed Ware
Sometimes it’s comforting to understand the human condition is universal in time and place. Hundreds of years ago, in a totally different culture, people still had the same heart aches and issues. And they lamented via poetry. Like default conversations are negative, most poems are sorrowful, but occasionally some celebrate life.
One thing that I have really come to appreciate about Persian culture is the alphabetic art. There are engravers who specialize in shaping words, because the script is open to some interpretation. In that regard its very different from the Latin alphabet – formulaic, right to left, stay in the lines. Arabic writing is different, more of a paint outside the lines approach. Because the Persian text is included, you can see places where the “rhyme” was essentially the shape of words. So in this element, Persian art is almost like a graphic novel, the words and the image both convey meaning.

This is the love that lasts a life-time through;
This is the pain that tears my soul in two;
This is the grief with no known remedy;
This is the night whose dawn I’ll never see.
-Anvari

[Lulu]

10th - start with two poets before/ contemporary to rudaki

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