Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals

Over many years I searched in vain for a Hafez in English that satisfied my taste for good poetry, while conveying the mystical meaning and spiritual beauty of his work. Here at last I feel I have found all these things in one book, and much more. One of the things I like best is that Squires approaches Hafez as a fellow poet while keeping a neutral view on the importance and prevalence of spirituality and mysticism in the poems.. Many people - myself among them - would want to say that all of Hafez' poems are first and foremost about 'divine love' and the lover's love for the Beloved. That all his references to the physical qualities of the object of adoration are but metaphors for qualities of the divine. In this context, Hafez' poems may be roughly divided into two categories: poems of separation and longing, and secondly, poems of enlightenment, written after being given Realization by his Sufi Master Attar. Geoffrey Squires makes no distinction in this respect: he has no particular axe to grind regarding the' inner meaning' of the ghazals, and lets his translations stand (or fall) on their own as poetry, and both the book and the reader are much better off for this. "A friend looks at some of my translations and says: these are poems about themselves. About words. About language. About being what they are". This illustrates what I have just said, and is one short example of the delightful commentaries studded throughout the book giving the reader amongst other things a glimpse, actually more than a glimpse, of Squire's own thought processes as he worked. The result of Squires' 'neutrality' for me is a sense of freedom to draw my own meaning from the poetry, unfettered by any sense of duty to 'understanding' in the mystical or any other sense of the word. The author's attachment to 'negative capability', to borrow Keats' expression (being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"), actually has a liberating effect that I think must help draw out meanings at various levels according to who the reader is and what he or she wants. So, for me the mysticism of Hafez soars clearly and freely, largely because Squires' poetry, as poetry, is so beautiful.

The poems are translated well, I hope. The poet cheated us by advertising “and interpretations “. Was it harder for translator to say few words about the plot or theme of the poem in that big space after each poem?

Geoffrey Squires' "Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals" is astonishing, maybe the best single volume of poetry in English of the past several years. 420 pages of Hafez in Squires' immaculate verse and 100 pages of commentary.Mark Weiss, poet and translator.

Somewhat disappointed .The interpretation of Hafez was not what I had expected .

I heard several years back that this translation was in preparation, and as a long-time admirer of Squires' work, have been greatly looking forward to it. I wasn't disappointed.The book itself is everything I hoped it would be in terms of physical production: elegantly laid out, with different fonts to distinguish the translations from the interpretations, while yet allowing them to interpenetrate as the reader is led into the complexities of the thought and language, and the publishers have made space for the copious notes at the end, which reveal how much learning is lightly worn in those translations.There's a physical density to the world of the poems which strikes me as very different from Squires' own 'original' poetry, and yet, at times, particularly in the interpretations, that other, sparer tone chimes out too. The near-paradox of such a rich material world being summoned up by such a famously spiritual poet as Hafez is rendered well here, with the richly sensual surface always controlled by a concern for what, and how, the verses might mean, and that balance never settles to predictability.All in all, it's a wonderful book, and I hope that it gets widely reviewed, and read by a public beyond that normally reached by contemporary poetry. It deserves it."Open the door O you who opens doorsfor they have closed the taverns againsuddenly and without warningin this of all seasons"I've been working my way through it for about three weeks now, frequently putting it to one side as various distractions arose, but always assured that I would be drawn back and into it again. It's a big book, so I happily recognize that this is a pleasure that's likely to last me for quite a while. Highly recommended!