— Persian Heritage – #107, Winter 2022 —
My Universe: Going to the Boundaries of Human Curiosity,
Hormoz Mansouri
(Savvy Book Marketing 2022)
This book is dedicated to the author’s father Mansour Mansouri, who he describes as his first teacher. The book is the result of his passion for reading and writing. Dr. Mansouri, in his writings, touches on a wider variety of topics, with the most important being science , astronomy, and philosophy.
One chapter I most enjoyed was The Cosmic Significance of Norooz, Iranian New Year Celebration. He describes Norooz as having a distinct cosmological significance, going back to the old Persian Empire. The most fun, however is when he describes the possibilities of how inhabitants of other planets would celebrate their new year.
While the book may be difficult to understand for those not versed in the technological terms of his subject matter, I still believe the book has an interesting central theme and is certain to open your curiosity.
Gold by Rumi
Translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s Gold is everything Rumi was himself-sacred, profane, laugh out loud funny, deeply earnest, demotic, and yes, Persian. There’s a rich fluency here not just in idiom but in gesture, in spirit … What a gift this is.” – Kaveh Akbar, Poetry Editor at The Nation
The poems in Gold shimmer with optimism and wisdom. While never denying the challenges of human existence, Rumi committed himself to unshackling his mind, cultivating love, and inviting us to do the same. His poems are imagistic vessels of Sufi insight, passionate records of the transformative power of friendship, tattered confessions, rapturous declarations, and wise prescriptions. In Gold, Rumi’s manifold voice speaks loud and clear. At once a humble seeker, demanding sage, kind elder, and ravaged, ecstatic lover, he calls out to us from the 13th century, his intelligence and honesty undiminished.
Haleh Liza Gafori’s translations make for an ideal place to discover or re-discover the words of the Persian master. Unlike many Rumi translators who do not speak Farsi, Gafori has heard the language since birth and learned to read and write it in order to access the poetry. With her ears tuned to the subtleties of the Farsi text and to the music of contemporary American poetry, she brings a vital, doubly-resonant energy that pulses through the cascades, leaps, and incantatory repetitions in these poems. Her awareness of cultural context and the array of meanings animating certain Farsi words has enabled her to bring a new depth and precision to the translations.
In Gold, a collection featuring some never before translated poems, Rumi is revealed as a startlingly innovative poet whose project of both defining and dissolving self in life and lyric feels avant-garde despite its age.