Rating: 
Summary: Not Hafez
Review: While the poems may be interesting at times, this is not Hafez. At best, it's poems _inspired_ by Hafez, and as such, the author is abusing the name of Hafez to sell books. How many people would buy "Poems by Daniel Ladinsky"? Probably not that many... And for a good reason, too.
Rating: 
Summary: It touches my Innermost Being!
Review: When you read each poem, take a moment to let it soak in. It'll drench you in the Love of the Beloved in us all.In Him,
Christina
Rating:
Summary: The Best Hafez "translation"
Review: Yes, Hafez is the greatest Persian-language poet outselling the Koran in Iran! No, Hafez's poetry cannot be translated: it is both beautiful (in Persian) and meaningful. Translations can only hope to capture one of those traits. Yes, Ladinsky's book is not a word-for-word (or poem-by-poem) translation. However, he captures the essence of Hafez with beautiful verse. I read Hafez in Persian all the time, and enjoy Ladinsky almost as much! Go Hafez! Thank you, Ladinsky.
Rating: 
Summary: Lovely--but is it Hafiz?
Review: Hafiz has long been one of my favorite poets. I first discovered him when I was in college via Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I've been readng his poems ever since. Since I am (alas!) without Parsi, I'm unable to read Hafiz in the original, and must rely upon the kindness of translators. Daniel Ladinsky has done an interesting job of rendering Hafiz's verse into English. Ladinsky has an ear for rhythm and he strikes me as an individual with deep spiritual sensibilities. When he renders one of Hafiz's couplets as "The body a tree./God a wind", one senses that there's more going into this translation than just philological expertise. Landinsky, like Hafiz, is a mystic. That spiritual bond with Hafiz, as well as a shared joy in the sheer vitality of creation, makes Landinsky's renderings light-hearted, in the sense that they shimmer with what Hafiz would call God's Light. Some of my favorite examples: "Whenever/God lays His glance/Life starts/Clapping"; "What is the beginning of/Happiness?/It is to stop being/So religious"; "All the talents of God are within you./How could this be otherwise/When your soul/Derived from His/Genes!" But while I can appreciate the lyrical way in which Ladinsky trys to express Hafiz's insights, I do wonder about the reliability of the translations. They're loaded with modernisms that are somewhat grating after a while: we're derived from God's "genes," the sun is "in drag," characters in the poems "dig potatoes," the soul visits a "summer camp." Moreover, many of the renderings make Hafiz sound suspiciously like a Zen master throwing out koans (an obvious example of this is the poem Ladinsky titles ""Two Giant Fat People".) To his credit, Landinsky freely admits in his translator's preface that he's "taken the liberty to play a few of [Hafiz's] lines through a late-night jazz sax instead of from a morning temple drum or lyre." But he's unapologetic, claiming that the translator's job is to help Hafiz's spirit "come across" to the Parsi-less reader, and that this demands a free rendering. I'm not so sure. This attitude strikes me as rather patronizing to the reader and disloyal to Hafiz himself. So my bottom line is this: Ladinsky's book is a good read on both poetical and spiritual grounds. But I'm forever left in doubt as to whether I'm reading Ladinsky or Hafiz.
Rating:
Summary: Title says it all..
Review: This book of verse is a blessing and a gift - you may find yourself purchasing it more than once - it's not the kind of book you just keep to yourself.
I really believe Daniel Ladinsky is to Hafiz what Coleman Barks is to Rumi, i.e., he is the only soul who seems to understand how to make Hafiz sing in English. A translation is always a collaboration between the poet and the translator. I understand some of Persian descent object to Ladinsky's translations; I'm no experrt on the original Farsi, but perhaps those critics were less familiar than Ladinsky with idiomatic English? I have read other translations and they didn't compare.
Or perhaps you should judge for yourself; I liked this one enough to memorize it: Even after
all these years,
the Sun never says
to the earth
"You owe me."
Look what happens -
with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky.
Rating:
Summary: Enchanting!
Review: The poet is wildly exuberant in the close embrace of the mystical presence of God which he finds anywhere and everywhere. The presence is dizzying. He is enraptured and amazed and in love. And he tells about it, shouts about it, whispers gently and sweetly about it in contemporary, plain-talk English that knows no bounds. Daniel Ladinsky has transported Hafiz from 14th century Persia to 21st century America and we enchanted by it.
Rating:
Summary: Accurate scholarship and inspired poetry
Review: This is a book of poetry that is inspired by the love-songs of the Persian poet, Hafiz who lived in the 1300s... there is no way to capture all the subtleties of the original Persian in English, it can't be done, though people have tried for centuries. Ladinsky's solution is to try to express his understanding of the spirit of Hafiz, disregarding the form, and in some of these poems it seems like he is actually "channeling" Hafiz -- vibrant,heartfelt, raucous, compassionate, drunk with love, desperate with longing for the Beloved, who may be reflected in a person but is certainly Divinity itself. The reviewer from Berkeley below criticized the very informative introduction to Hafiz's life, but his criticism is incorrect- he has confused Hafiz's master, Mohammed Attar, with the Sufi poet Fariduddin Attar, who lived 100 years earlier. Meher Baba, who is quoted in the introduction, is not a Sufi master, but a spiritual figure from India who lived in the 20th century and energized all spiritual paths... he wrote a book called "God Speaks" that integrates many mystical systems, and his "Discourses" are the clearest, most direct modern explanations of how to live a spiritual life that I have ever seen. Apparently Hafiz was his favorite poet and is quoted frequently in these works, and Ladinsky uses Meher Baba's insights in his own work. The reviewer below is correct when he says these are not really translations of Hafiz, and if I had a criticism of this joyful, inspiring book, it would be that Mr. Ladinsky should have called them "Renderings" as he did in his earlier collection, because they seem to be new poems inspired by Hafiz rather than attempts to accurately translate the ghazals (love-songs). But they are clearly animated by the breath of that magnificent Persian poet.
Rating: 
Summary: The Gift? or Gift-Horse?
Review: While I can possibly appreciate "The Gift" as an introduction to Persian/Sufi poetry for non-Persian speakers (with an interest in Western versions of "new age," re-oriented sufism), the book falls very short on accuracy. As a scholarly work for any serious student of Persian poetry, it is completely worthless. This is not a book of "translations," as Ladinsky states. Rather it is a book of Ladinsky's renditions of other peoples translations of Hafez' work. Not only are the meter and the rhyme of Hafez completely lost, but he does not even stay true to the meanings and feelings that Hafez inspires. There are, admittedly, a couple of poems in Ladinsky's collection that are quite nice, but they are a far cry from the genius of Hafez. Some reviewers have put Ladinsky's Hafez in the same category as Coleman Barks'renditions of Rumi. Although neither author has even a working knowledge of Farsi (Persian), and both rely on others' actual translations in coming up with their renditions, this is not a fair comparison. Barks' work has stayed much truer to Rumi's meaning, even if the style and meter are lost. Furthermore, one cannot even begin to cross-reference Ladinsky's versions of Hafez' work with the originals in the Divan-e Hafez (in Farsi) because he does not follow the standards for locating the qazals (a type of Persian poem) either by page number or alphabetically. The author, then, cannot possibly be called a scholar of Hafez or Persian poetry. Translating the work of Hafez is a major feat, but deserves to be undertaken with great care. I would read this book more as perhaps a "Hafez-inspired" book of poems by Daniel Ladinsky, but to call it a translation is a misrepresentation.
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Summary: Blessed Ruin: Lessons on the Stages of Love
Review: Having already been enchanted by Daniel Ladinsky's previous rendererings of Hafiz in _I Heard God Laughing_ and _The Subject Tonight is Love_, Ladinsky's present effort is worthy of no less acclaim. In fact, his choices this time from the _Divan_(250 poems) bring home with exquisite precision that Hafiz, the Perfect Master is in fact, a Master of Love. The reader gets the clear message in Ladinsky's portrait that Hafiz has intermalized to perfection his teacher's (Mohammad Attar)lessons on the manifold levels of love and its demands: "I saw it was Hafiz who wrote all your notes of sadness, But also etched and gave you Every ecstatic wince of joy your face, body and heart has ever known." (p.38). This is no "New Age" nonsense, which at its worst hails the light and avoids the shadow, Hafiz (though seducing the beginner lover by his promises of sweetness and tenderness, that God could actually "become an infant in your arms"[p,56]) cautions that he "hold's the Lion's Paw whenever I dance."(p.57). Western culture has not received such lessons on divine love since Jesus and Plato, and unfortunately, the fresh images of their teachings on love have all been but lost to humanity, save a small remnant of sketches. Ladinsky's Hafiz both assures and challenges the seeker because any fully-alive being with such capacity for loving as Hafiz dwarfs our puny notions of western romantic love without shaming or condemning it. Only encouraging like a true teacher with compassion would: "You ask for a few words of comfort and guidance. I quickly kneel at your side offering you this whole book . . . Here's a rope, tie it around me, Hafiz will be your companion for life."(p83). Hafiz's language of love utilized the metaphor of his time and culture as Jesus incorporated the images of parable. Ladinsky courageously steps out of line (as surely did Hafiz) and takes the risk to be mundane without being irreverent when describing the labyrinth that is the heart: "There are different wells within your heart. Some fill with each good rain. Others are far too deep for that." (p76) Ladinsky's Hafiz teaches us of a divine being who walks among and talks with and celebrates his creation; yet challenges it to stretch beyond its boundaries of self-interest: " I want both of us to start talking about this great love. As if you , I, and the sun were all married and living in a tiny room, helping each other to cook, do the wash, weave and sew, care for our beautiful animals."(p.180). Ladinsky's fine portrait of this 14th century Perfect Master gives the West the certain bugal cry that God is not dead, but it is we who are dead to God. The success of this book will measure how many of us are indeed alive here, and how many are really interested in the more mature lessons of loving.
Rating: 
Summary: Daniel Ladinsky's Translation - A Love/Hate Relationship!
Review: This book has been my first introduction to Hafiz, so I am not sure how other translator's have handled the text, but I am absolutely captivated by the exuberance of Hafiz' relationship with God, as portrayed by Ladinsky. It almost makes me forget childhood trauma caused by thoughts of retribution from the cranky and capricious Old Testament God I was brought up with. The problem with the translation is that Mr. Ladinsky takes words and thoughts which have been universal enough to inspire humanity over several centuries ... and buttonholes them into late twentieth century terminology! Really, quite unfair! And yet...I find myself returning to this volume frequently; skipping over the bits that make me cringe and laughing with delight over the rest!
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