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Summary: The beginning of a beautiful friendship?
Review: Somebody announces, "I heard God laughing," and you crane your neck around. It's as irresistible as if he were to hoist a line of shot-glasses on his nose. What's to lose? At worst you'll get to watch a guy spill a drink on himself. So it's with a bit of cheek that Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz first snags a moment of your time. With each line that follows the barroom boast of the title, 'I Heard God Laughing' continues as a charming, quietly relentless seduction. The 14th century Persian poet, as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky, tolerates neither time, culture nor any other abstraction between himself and the reader. It's this same intimacy that has established Hafiz as the best-loved poet in his native Iran. A quick glance at the production values of this very modern treatment reveals that he enters as a celebrity in the West as well. Ladinsky's renderings are set on single-sided pages and framed with extensive literary and cultural guideposts throughout an elegant soft-cover package. But this polish is very much beside the point. In the meat of the book, 'I Heard God Laughing' is no historical exploration. As wrought here, Hafiz is intently direct, even conversational. Whether the interchange takes place in a palace or a pub fades from one's awareness. As in any heart-to-heart, the authority of the words shared has nothing to do with formality or flourishes. The most influential personage in any life is a friend. Hafiz aims for no lesser status than this with his readers. Considered afterwards, it's an astonishingly high bar. But in the midst of being drawn in, one is only aware of a thoroughly understanding ear. That reading this poetry can leave one feeling deeply listened to is an indication of its undercurrent genius. "You don't have to act crazy anymore - We all know you were good at that. Now retire, my dear, From all that hard work you do Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart..." It's been said of Freud that he was a man who awoke before the dawn while the rest of the world was still lost, sleeping in darkness. In time, his powerful grasp of the lower roots of motivation roused humanity to admit denied forces at work in their behavior. Hafiz has the same ability to unveil, but his revelation is of our extreme intimacy with the summit of our being. "Look in a clear mountain mirror - See the Beautiful Ancient Warrior And the Divine elements You always carry inside That infused this Universe with sacred Life So long ago" Only friendship could win the trust Hafiz needs to take us to this altitude. Time and again, the poet whisks us there before we realize the journey we've made. "If someone sits with me And we talk about the Beloved, If I cannot give his heart comfort, If I cannot make him feel better About himself and this world, Then, Hafiz, Quickly run to the mosque and pray - For you have just committed The only sin I know." The plain speech belies an astonishing wealth of insight into the human condition. One has to revisit the poems repeatedly to begin to uncover how Hafiz has managed to work his way so far in. Once there, he exploits his position in order to weave the personal with the metaphysical so intricately that we may never quite get them separated again. "What is laughter? What is laughter? It is God waking up! O it is God waking up! It is the sun poking its sweet head out From behind a cloud You have been carrying too long, Veiling your eyes and heart It is Light breaking ground for a great Structure That is your Real body - called Truth... Laughter is the polestar Held in the sky by our Beloved, Who eternally says, 'Yes, dear ones, come this way, Toward Me and Love!'" In the end, the sound of God's laughter - whether it booms, wheezes, or is more of a chuckle - remains undisclosed. But a curious effect takes hold in the silence. More than once the reader finds some previously inaccessible knot inside mysteriously unraveled. It becomes evident that a prankish compassion is at work on these pages. When contemplating the source of a mischief this insidious, all bets are off - even those made in barrooms
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Summary: Hafiz trues the course of our journey towards Love.
Review: Such beauty! In this joyous book Hafiz appears to us as a beacon of pure light in contemporary garb. These deeply tender, witty, clear-eyed and fullest -hearted renditions have brightened my life. Hafiz can't help but true the course of our journey towards Love. Because for Hafiz, in fact, nothing else exists; for him, only Love is Real. Hafiz has influenced and nourished a gracious many through the years. In the West, inspired notables include Goethe, Nietzsche, Byron, Hugo and Emerson. Emerson wrote of Hafiz in his journals, "He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see and be." And Goethe exclaimed, "This is madness, I know well, Hafiz has no peer!" I Heard God Laughing is a perfect gem of a book. Go ahead, take Hafiz home with you. Why-- he might even lead the way, dancing and singing all the while.
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Summary: What a wonderous gift!!
Review: The high praise from the other reviewers is well deserved. We have now purchased 15 copies of this and given them away to friends as they pass through our lives. One couple reads one of them to each other each evening at sunset; they want to savour each one. Another couple has found that when they are having a disagreement, reading one of these Hafiz poems (picked by opening the book) somehow makes the issues at dispute seem less urgent. My wife and I have been reading them to each other for several months now and we never tire of Hafiz's life enhancing remarks. Ladinsky's other books of Hafiz are also recommended: The Gift, The Subject Tonight is Love. I hope he is working on more books.
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Summary: Distortion of a Great Poet's Work
Review: This book is extremely disappointing because it seriously distorts the work of the wonderful Persian poet Hafez. My grandfather taught Persian language and poetry in Iran and Germany for 34 years, and I, like thousands of Iranians, memorized Hafez's poems since childhood. The author openly admits he does not speak Persian and wrote his own poems after reading nineteenth century translations. There is not one poem in this book that can be identified as a Hafez poem in the Persian langauge. It is deceptive to identify this book as "renderings" of Hafez. There is no similarity in form or content, and the author's cliche spiritual messages seem, to me, to be totally unrelated to the authentic poetry of Hafez. The true work of the poet Hafez is matchless, wonderful and powerful in its true language. Many Iranians consider it the greatest of poetry. Unfortunately, it bears no resemblance to the contents of this book. It is too bad American readers lack the background to understand this.
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Summary: Perfect Gem
Review: This work is a glistening gem of a book. Simple, clean, multifaceted, and very very deep at the same time. I have many Persian friends who are familiar with the original poetry and are astonished by the beauty of these renderings. These are not literal translations.....they are inner reflections. They succeed perfectly at reflecting the inner light of Hafiz in a unique way that refreshes one's heart. The imagery and language is perfect for this time. Deep in my heart I am convinced that Hafiz, Rumi, Kabir, Attar, and any other poet and lover of God would applaud.
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Summary: Vibrant, contemporary rendering of love poetry of Hafiz
Review: Though he lived seven hundred years ago, Hafiz is still the most popular poet of Persia, and one of the greatest love poets who ever lived. This little book is perhaps the best introduction to his life and work. The poems of Hafiz overflow with a profound appreciation of the beauty and richness of life when seen through the eyes of love. With unerring insight, he explores the feelings and motives associated with every level of love, tracing each nuance of emotion in depth and detail. His poetry outlines the stages of the mystic's "path of love" - that journey of inner unfolding in which love dissolves personal boundaries and limitations to join larger processes of growth and transformation. Through these processes, human love becomes divine love and the lover merges ultimately with the source and goal of all love, which Hafiz calls the Divine Beloved. Dan Ladinsky has rendered sixty of these poems in a vibrant contemporary American idiom, and the editor has added a concise, informative essay about the poet's life and times.
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Summary: life changing
Review: When I started questioning my religion as a Christian, I started losing a lot of faith... then I came across this book.
The translations are incredible, the poetry is awesome, and I love the history and context section in the back of the book. I carry it with me whenever I travel, I read a poem every night. It's really wonderful, it makes it so that no matter how terrible my day was, it can end beautifully.
Buy it, it will change your life.
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