Lyrics of Life

Fatemeh Keshavarz is the Roshan Chair in Persian Studies & Director at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Keshavarz works on mystical Persian poetry and is author of five monographs including Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi and Recite in the Name of the Red Rose: Poetic Sacred Making in Twentieth Century Iran (University of South Carolina Press, 1998 & 2006). Her last monograph, Lyrics of Life: Sa’di on Love, Cosmopolitanism, and Care of the Self was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2016.

• At the brink of writing: which doors to open first?Cosmopolitan kinship: the making of a multi-world subjectivity in the poetry of Sa‘diSa‘di on care of the self: ethical games of power in practice of freedom‘Every new flower arriving in the world’: Sa‘di and the art of ghazal writingGazing at the garden of your beauty: love in the gardenMy poor heart sometimes runs, sometimes whirls: meet Sa‘di the comedianEpilogue: leaving the garden already? Here are a few things I hope you take alongBibliography

Sa'di is a poet for this age, and every age. And there is no better gateway to the rose garden of Sa'di's magnificent world than the mind, the heart, and the pen of Fatemeh Keshavarz. Keshavarz situates Sa'di as a deeply humane voice, poetically lyrical, and ethically cosmopolitan. We are indebted to Professor Keshavarz for another masterful and lyrical work that opens up not just Sa'di, but a whole possibility of humanistic encounter with the pre-modern world. Recommended most enthusiastically for all who love literature, ethics, and cosmopolitanism.