Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance
(October 2013)
A Dialogue with the Persian Poet Hafiz Hafiz - Author Martin Bidney - Author and Translator
A selection of poems by one of Islam’s greatest poetic voices.
“In his poetry, Hafiz has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly … Hafiz has no peer!” — Goethe
Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance includes 103 pioneering poems by the medieval Persian poet and Sufi monk Muhammad Shemseddin Hafiz (ca. 1320–1389). With the rich complexity of a character in ...(Read More)
West-East Divan
(December 2010)
The Poems, with "Notes and Essays": Goethe's Intercultural Dialogues Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Author Martin Bidney - Translated with introduction and commentary Peter Anton von Arnim - Translator
Translations of Goethe’s poems about Arabia and Persia and his essays on Islamic culture.
In West-East Divan (1819), Germany’s greatest poet J. W. von Goethe offered a work of lasting appeal. Stimulated by the Divan (“Collection”) by medieval pub poet Hafiz, Goethe blends his own identity with that of the Persian Sufi master who sang the delights of wine a...(Read More)
East-West Poetry
(January 2009)
A Western Poet Responds to Islamic Tradition in Sonnets, Hymns, and Songs Martin Bidney - Author
Poetry that responds to the Qur’an and to the tradition it created.
Written for the general reader and the specialist, Muslim and non-Muslim, East-West Poetry responds to the Qur’an, scriptural heart of Islam, and to the tradition it created. An introduction relates the Qur’an to Hebrew and Christian biblical writing and to Rumi, who illumined the Qur’an with Sufi mystic wisdom; an...(Read More)