The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women

by Dick Davis (Translator)

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.

A Penguin Classic

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.

Genres: Poetry, Iran, Classics, Feminism, Fiction, Literature, Middle East

264 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2019

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

[Brian Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 women spanning over a thousand years, from Rabe’eh in the 900s CE to Fatemeh Ekhtesari a few years ago. Let me mention just two of them.

Mahsati Ganjavi (1089–1159) published famous quatrains, celebrating joy and love as the greatest aims in life. She lived her dream of personal fulfillment on a public stage, as an intellectual associate of Omar Khayyam and a companion of the Seljuq Sultan Sanjar. She aroused controversy condemning the dogmatism of professional clerics, and writing odes to freedom:

No force can bind us: pull of moment, arrows flying home,
Nor any wild nostalgia that seized our hearts whilom
Though my soft braids turned chains of steel and anchored in your heart,
Could any chain keep me home if I should wish to roam?

Her city of Ganja, which is now in the Republic of Azerbaijan, has a beautiful center for art and literature devoted to her memory.

Jahan Malek Katun (1324–1382) lived in Shiraz during the same decades as the great Hafez, and these poets seemed to interact in a dance of sometimes stylistically mirroring lyrics. She was approximately three times more prolific than Hafez, although the love she expressed was less ecstatic than profoundly compassionate. In 1353 the warlord Mobarez al-Din invaded Shiraz and killed all her male relatives. She wrote 23 heartbroken elegies to a deceased infant daughter. Her works included hundreds of odes, quatrains, and 1,413 gazal love poems, the earliest manuscripts of which are embellished with gold or illuminated with fine artwork, preserved as treasures of world heritage in Paris, Istanbul, and Cambridge.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

more like a thousand years of poetry by bad bitches

[daria ❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

in honor of nowruz (aka the persian new year), i went ahead and recommended this and many other persian reads here: https://youtu.be/Ipjcp_e0fOU

[Sahel's · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 itself is much harder. All this being said, I believe Dick Davis is a legendary translator and scholar and his work in this book is more than admirable! The choice of poems, although he is modest about it in the introduction, are highly clever and all go with very well together.

[Eadweard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aysheh Samarqandi

I said, "Bright moon, give me my heart back to me

How long must I endure love's agony?"

He spread a thousand hearts before my eyes

And said, "Take yours, which is it? You tell me."
----


Jahan Malek Khatun

My heart, sit down, welcome love's pain, and make the best of it:

The rose is gone but the thorns remain, so make the best of it.

My heart said, "No! I can't endure this sadness any longer..."

I saud, "You've no choice, don't complain, just make the best of it."
----


Mehri

He asked if he might kiss my lips, although
Not which lips - those above, or those below?
----


Pari Khan Khanom

We cannot lean upon this world
this emptiness that fades away
Bring wine my friend, we cannot change
the destinies we must obey

We cannot build a house upon
this flowing flood of emptiness
Or think of life eternal in
this ruin where we briefly stay
----


Makhfi

Love comes and steals a wise man's common sense outright
(The thieves dowse the light first, to stay out of sight);
A blind man wouldn't hurt himself as I have done
I'm in the house but can't locate its owner's light.
----


Reshheh

My heart beats wildly in my breast as though
Pierced by a shaft shot from his eyebrows' bow.
----


Efaf

In love's street, O my heart, beware -
Highwaymen wait in ambush there.
----


Fakhri

They say love's a catastrophe...
O God, may no one ever be
Deprived of this catastrophe.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 voices are lyrical, elegiac, erudite and self conscious! It was a wonderfull journey with a very informative introduction.

[Jared Gulian · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 just a handful of Iranian books I've read so far.

This particular book still sits on my bedside table, and months later I find I am still dipping in and out of it from time to time.

The poetry here is absolutely gorgeous. It's startling how strongly these poems have given me a connection to women who died centuries ago. It's like they are standing next to me. I've really appreciated hearing these voices alongside more commonly read Persian poets like Hafiz and Rumi.

It's heartbreaking that things haven't yet changed in Iran. I hope they will soon. Woman, Life, Freedom.

[Joshua Loong · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is an amazing lecture by Dick Davis where he comments that:

The Persian culture is an enormously old culture. It is one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world… and that moment when the Arabs conquered Iran (~1400 years ago) is halfway through Iranian recorded history. There is as much recorded history of Iran before that moment as since that moment, and that recorded history from before that moment is deeply, profoundly, utterly, totally present in the culture.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbA2t...

Although Davis’ edited collection of poetry includes only writers after the Arab conquest, through reading both his amazing introduction and the words of numerous women throughout the last thousand years, this principle becomes incredibly clear. As you move through the centuries, you observe how each writer is working off of a larger historical dialogue. A dialogue that is essentially entirely foreign to me, and to many of us in the West.

There’s several competing historical influences that became very apparent: the role of Islam, the mixture of many Central and South Asian cultures, and the recurrence of major motifs and imagery throughout the ages (certain nature motifs like tulips and crows, Biblical and Islamic characters, ancient heroes etc.)

You quickly learn that Persian history is dominated by the general push and pull of Islamic culture that has changed the level of religious tolerance and women’s freedom throughout the centuries under different rulers and political systems. The latest incarnation of this is obviously the contrast between the current regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution with the more secular, democratic period Pahlavi dynasty post-1925. Though this conflict was infused with modern Western ideas introduced in the 19th century, this cycle has been going on for centuries, and significantly influenced the type of poetry produced in each generation.

You also learn about the enormous influence of Persian culture throughout Central and South Asia. Many of the writers collected here hail from places Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. This influence was so great that Urdu, the 10th most spoken language in the world, is actually a Persianized form of Hindi.

These ideas became clear because this collection ranges incredibly wide. It includes poems about love, loss, nature, politics, feminism, war, revolution, friendships, lust, family, and more. It gives you a kaleidoscopic view of Persian culture and history in an unstructured way. Of course, Davis’ introduction gives you solid historical footing from which you can embark on the adventure, but reading poetry is not like reading a textbook about Iran.

I was particularly delighted by the fact that Davis himself translated essentially every piece in this collection. Ranging from the very ancient to the very modern (though he comments that Farsi is quite easy to read in its historical forms in comparison to other languages), he was able to translate many things in English verse, which is an amazing feat. This is on top of the fact that it appears he is one of the very, very few people in the world who have dedicated themselves to translating Persian into English. It’s one thing to translate Homer, of which we have numerous reference translations to work off of. It’s another thing to take: a) a language that is rarely translated into English, and b) poets who are minor enough almost no one has ever translated them into *any* language before.

As a fun aside, for every poet included in the book, Davis writes a small paragraph outlining their biography. For some of the authors, I did some Googling of their names, and found many didn’t even have their own Wikipedia pages. Many of the ones that did were essentially stubs, and, of these, many of the references cite back to some of Davis’ other books. It was hilarious.

Of course, academic fields in which a single person is doing everything is not ideal given the fact that peer review is almost impossible. But reading his work and listening to his words, it’s clear how he deeply cares about Persian culture and the beauty in bringing its deep history to the West.

[Wendelle]

This is an anthology of incredibly expressive poetry from gifted Iranian women over ten centuries, focusing mostly on topics of ardor or anguish or anxiety of love and romantic relationships( both gratifying and unsatisfying, unrequited and returned), with a few poems about longing for freedom or longing for wine, written in hyperbolic or unrestrained emotionality by writers ranging from princesses, courtesans of kings, handmaidens of queens, and regular civilians who left their mark on posterity through the power of their poetry.

[sassafrass · Rating 5 out of 5]

the intro and footnotes alone are fascinating, well worth a read on their own, but of course the poetry.....the POETRY......'we must go into the street, all this sky won't fit into the window'

ahhhh

i am well fed

[Luisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Saoirse Ronan's women meme* How wonderful is to feel connected to women who lived centuries ago.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Tahirih translation warms the cockles

[Detya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally speechless

[kyra ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I can't forget you while my lips
Still bear that kiss's burning trace
And even though the passion fades
Still I'll be lost in your embrace."

3.5 stars! ˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚

a beautiful poetry collection depicting the love, yearning, oppression and frustration of persian woman from medieval times up to the present. I really appreciated the little information about each poet before their works were displayed - it really provided context and emotional value to their poems when you knew the gist of their situation and environment. this is the second persian poetry collection i've read and i can confidently say there will be more. their poems, especially when it comes to romance, have a way of stirring the inner trappings of your heart.

how touching to know that women in a completely different country, in a completely different era, share the same complicated feelings of being in love.

"The more I search myself the more I see
That longing for your love has ruined me;
I gaze into the mirror of my heart,
And though it's me who looks, it's you I see."

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was such a good treat, to prepare for the upcoming spring. In fact the title suggests it a mirror of the heart, and so it was. Going through the poems and women poets from Persia revealed as much about them as about ourselves. While I stopped at pretty much every line to say find the subtlety there was, I couldn't help but feel in intimate presence of these poets.
My heart found its reflection in the poems as its title suggested.
I however enjoyed poems from the pre-republic era, rather floral and subtle than the former ones.
But one theme that fascinated me enough during the Iranian republic era with all the changes that occurred was how women courageously defended their statut and more so endorsed different ideologies through their poems ! Brilliant !

[Soph M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic eye opening read the earliest poem was in the 10th century and some woman couldn’t be traced but they were still able to connect with woman today these poems were so diverse some were about sex others about personal experiences and living under social structures also going through war there’s something to relate to in most of these poems and reading it all from woman in history was very special

[Shriya Uday · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent collection that proves people have always been people, balancing the huge problems around them with their personal troubles.

[saman · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was my 19th birthday gift. it was so cool!

[Axl Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been in my pile of unread books for a very long time. When the protests broke out in Iran, I felt compelled to read it and it was a wonderful experience. This volume give us a glimpse of the lives and times of female poets across the ages. I'm surprised at the range and variety of topics and styles that female poets used across the ages in writing their pieces. Most poems are heartwarming, others are comical, but the pieces that really struck me most were the ones that showed us what it meant to be a woman pushing back against their country's gender norms.

[Eliza]

reviewed in TLS 6099

[a ☕︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

i said, “my heart would like a kiss from you.”
“a kiss from me will cost your soul,” he said.
immediately my heart poked at my side
and whispered, “that’s dirt cheap, dear, go ahead!”

—motrebeh, twelfth century

*

my eyes weep pearl-like tears that glisten
like shining earrings in my ears—
so take these earrings, since the world
says you’re the owner of my tears.

—aysheh samarqandi, thirteenth century

*

i saw the sunset in the sky
at evening prayer time, tulip red—
it was as though they’d killed the sun
and there her blood-soaked skirts were spread.

—aysheh afghani, eighteenth century

*

bring rose-hued wine that scours away the rust
from lovers’ hearts, and cleanses them of dust.
bring me a goblet-full when nightfall comes
and bring me tambourines and harps and drums;
bring me a glittering bowl brimful of wine
that shines as badakhshan’s bright rubies shine.

—farkhondeh savoji, nineteenth century

*

i’m forgotten and decency is silent
and you are hanging from love’s gallows.

—mina assadi, b. 1943

*

i could be wearing all the clouds in the world
and they’d still throw a cloak over my shoulders
so that i wouldn’t be naked.

—granaz moussavi, b. 1976

*

like a leopard
he emerged
from among the bushes
with genghis khan’s smile on his lips
his black eyes flickered
he held out his hand
the poets of nayshapur
the multi-colored silks of balkh
the granaries of khorasan and khwarazm
in me
went up in flames
and turned to smoke.

—sara mohammadi-ardehali, b. 1976

*

why are you afraid of the water?
the persian empire has fallen
we’ve agreed on summer
come, with old phoenician mariners
we’ll go sailing.

—sara mohammadi-ardehali, b. 1976

[Zulekha Saqib · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘If you’re a hypocrite, and bow your face in prayer — what use is that?
Once poison’s reached into your soul, remedial care — what use is that?
Showing yourself to everyone as though you’re virtuous and moral,
If you’re all filth within, the spotless cloak you wear—what use is that?’ — Mahsati

[Tom Wyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a lovely little collection.

I read it having enjoyed the poems of Jahan Malek Khatun in ‘Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz’ (and, indeed, all of Dick Davis’ other translated works more generally), and was similarly happy with the result. Davis is (as ever) a superb guide to the tropes and forms of Persian lyrical poetry, and he strikes a remarkable balance between being accessible to those who’ve read very little without being overly simplistic to those who’ve read a bit more. That’s important: one of the most interesting parts of this book was the historical settings and personages found within. I hadn’t quite appreciated the cultural and literary impact of the Safavid revolution before now, and Davis’ willingness to follow the shift in the Persianate literary world’s centre of gravity to Mughal India was really welcome. More generally, I appreciated his willingness to interpret the scope of this work broadly, bringing in voices from Iran, India, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and beyond. Nur Jahan’s poetry, for instance, was especially haunting and powerful, and I’m glad I got the chance to enjoy it.

I was struck by the fascinating lives of many of the poets found within. Jahan is an obvious example, but there are many more - like Shah Tahmasp’s daughter Pari Khan Khanom, who had managed to both engineer herself into position as de facto ruler of Iran and be murdered by the age of just 29. Compiling a volume that follows the progression of Persian poetry over 1,000 years also enables Davis to foreground both the genre’s remarkable consistency of form (with the structure only really shifting in the past century or so) and the sheer variety of topics which that form had been used to address. I was moved by the exchange of poems between Zib al-Nissa/Makhfi and Aqel Khan, particularly given that the former was locked up by her father the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb for most of her life (and intrigued by the contrast with the poems of her sister, Zinat al-Nissa Beigum, who was favoured by Aurangzeb and so lived a much freer life). I liked that some were funny, some were mystical, and some were scandalous. I was touched when the rawness of an author’s pain penetrated the strictures of form - with Jahan Malek Khatun and Aysheh Afghani responding similarly to the deaths of their children, despite being separated by centuries.

By inclination I’m less interested in the modern works, and Davis (perhaps inevitably, given the source material) spends a lot of time on these. Even so, the fact that we know so much more about their lives has its benefits. Knowing that Tahereh/Qorrat al-Ayn was an early adherent of the breakaway Babist movement adds a certain piquancy to her work, but more than that - encountering poets whose preoccupations echo our own is thrilling. Suddenly, you have poets by nationalists, communists and feminists. From Nimtaj Solmasi writing about the war, Parvin Etesami about poverty, or Alem Taj about women’s rights, we move away from Sufism and mysticism and into a world that is more recognisably our own. In this, Davis is evenhanded. He points out that Tahereh Saffarzadeh was a supporter of the Islamic Revolution, and that in modern Iran she has tended to be defined by the fact that she was a favourite of Khomeini. At the same time, he doesn’t shy away from noting that her poems aren’t entirely conformist; she is strident in her contention that women’s voices deserve not just to be heard but to be amplified. In this, Davis invites us to interrogate the ambiguities and nuances of the earlier pieces anew. Perhaps they too are more inflected with the politics of their own time than we give them credit for, which goes some way to explaining their continued interest and appeal centuries after they were written.

[Aejay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of poems, providing profounding insights into the lives and thoughts of Persian-speaking women throughout history. The translations by Davis were effective, and the included contexts added greater meaning to the poems.

Poetry lent a voice to women, who were always marginalised and treated as inferior to men to varying extents throughout history.

Of course, the poems are quite feminist in nature. It should, however, be noted that for pre-modern poetry, the women were all from rich backgrounds and hence would have been more empowered to think about the societal issues they faced.

It was interesting to notice the shift in tone with changing landscapes over the years, as noted by Davis in his introduction. The focus of the selected pre-modern poetry seemed to be more on celebration of the spiritual, with many mentions of wine, as well as misery over forced marriages, sometimes explicitly mocking their husbands. In contrast, the modern poetry was dark and sombre. There was a deep yearning for their country and the golden past, and we quickly note that these poets were almost all persecuted in some way for their dissenting voices against the strict regime.

I am very glad to have explored such a profound and important part of Persian literature. As with all arts, the voices of the marginalised become more powerful and distinct when expressed through it, and such was the case with these women’s poetry. With the very famous poets like Rumi, Ferdowsi, and Hafez still studied today in Farsi-speaking Iran and celebrated overseas, these poems deserve their own place too. While they have garnered their spotlight overseas through Davis’ translation, it is saddening to think they have yet to find their way back to their country as the poets would have wished.

[Julia Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems in this collection are incredible. Davis’s notes are meticulous, and his profound admiration for the lives and work of these poets shines through the whole anthology. The notes clarify nuances of culture that would otherwise have been lost on me (allusions to figures in the Shahnameh or Layli and Majnun, for example, or metaphors common in Persian poetry).

The range of emotions on display is striking. Certain themes were recurrent, and explored with great creativity. Romantic love and women’s oppression on individual and societal levels stand out in this regard. I was greatly moved by the work of Forugh Farrokhzad. Her poem Captive is heartbreaking - all the more so for the fact that she did indeed, as predicted, lose custody of her son for leaving her unhappy marriage. Fatemeh Shams’s poem W for War, a tribute to a Kurdish town in Syria besieged by ISIS in 2014, is among the saddest poems I have ever read. There is, however, some levity amongst these works; there was a trend in the 15th-16th century towards bawdy poetry, many of which are extremely funny. A notable example is the exchange between Aqel Khan and the poet Makhfi, in which she retaliates to a crude riddle with a “your mum” joke.

There is truly a poem for every mood and every state of mind in this collection. It is superb.

[açelya · Rating 5 out of 5]

some of my favorites ✮⋆˙

“I said, “Bright moon, give my heart back to me—
How long must I endure love’s agony?”
He spread a thousand hearts before my eyes
And said, “Take yours; which is it? You tell me.”
(Aysheh Samarqandi)

“Last night, my love, my life, you lay with me,
I grasped your pretty chin, I fondled it,
And then I bit, and bit, your sweet lips till
I woke… It was my fingertip I bit.

My love’s an ache no ointments can allay now;
My soul’s on fire—how long you’ve been away now!
I said, “I will be patient while he’s gone.”
(But that’s impossible... it’s one whole day now… )”
(Jahan Malek Khatun)

“Possessed of untold sovereignty, beneath my veil
I am a woman whose good deeds will never fail;
Even for breezes that the morning wafts to me
It’s hard to pass the curtain of my chastity—
I keep my shadowed beauty from the sun, whose light
Illumines towns, bazaars, and every common sight.
Not every woman with two yards of veil can reign,
Not every crowned head’s worthy of a king’s domain—”
(Padshah Khatun)

[Rolypolyoly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume holds poetry from a time and place in the middle east which technically doesn't exist anymore - and for that it is a treasure. Laced with longing, heartbreak, mutiny, obscenity and courage, these women articulate what simple sentences cannot and reading it one can't help but feel how tangible their emotions were/are. It blows my mind that a bulk of it was written centuries past in a setting so unimaginably different from my own but it's still so real to me.

It's safe to say I've read a decent amount of poetry - the likes of shakespeare, auden, yeats, pushkin, tennyson, even rumi - but none compare to what these Persian poetesses have to say. Big props to the translator - I doubt that the true depth of these verses can ever be fully understood outside the native Persian tongue, but he's done a fantastic job in carrying, I'm sure, a good magnitude of it over into English. What more putting himself in the shoes of a Persian woman.

[Zuska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dick Davis, the translator, obviously has a deep love and respect for Persian culture and the introduction to this collection of poems gives the non-Persian reader so much great background and context to bring to reading the poems, in a very readable essay.

Much of the poetry is love poetry and some of it is quite ribald. Here's one from Mehri, in the 14th/15th C. She was "married to a court doctor who was much older than she was, and many of her poems complain about this."
"Between us now, I feel there's no connection left,/No loyalty or kindness or affection left;/You've grown so abject and so old, you haven't got/The feeble strength to manage an erection left."

I really enjoyed spending time with this collection, and thanks to Dick Davis's introduction, I was able to enjoy these poems individually and in relation to each other. Just a wonderful book.

[Ladyknightstar · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I listened to this as an audiobook. , but I don't see any option for that.
Unlike many books, you definitely want to read the introduction.
This is because Davis explains by way of biography, a lot of Persian women history and how and why he has organized the book and why he chose certain writers to represent their time periods.
This book is more of an anthology than a history.
If you are reading this book to know about the history of women in poetry in Tehran, you need to read the introduction.
The rest of the book is organized into sections representing poets and their eras in hisotry chronologically.
I really want to know more abotu the history of the women writers, so will need to dig around further. I suspect there's not much written in English, but will search academic publications.
It's a great start, though if you want to know more.

[❀ Diana ❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This beautiful collection of poems was a true delight to be read. Some of my favorite lines are as follow:

'We cannot lean upon this world
this emptiness that fades away
Bring wine my friend, we cannot change
the destinies we must obey.

We cannot build a house upon
this flowing flood of emptiness
Or think of life eternal in
this ruin where we briefly stay.' (Pari Khan Khanom, 1548-1578)

'My hope's that God will make you fall in love
With someone cold and callous just like you
And that you'll realize my true value when
You're twisting in the tornments I've been through.' (Rabe'eh, 10th century).

'The more I search myself the more I see
That longing for your love has ruined me;
I gaze into the mirror of my heart,
And though it's me who looks, it's you I see.' (Daughter of Salar, bint Esfahanief, early 13th century).