Author Description

Expanded 2023 edition. "For the Sufi mystic, the soul that is animated in its earthen shell lives a terrestrial life in spiritual exile from its maker..." So writes the author in his Introduction to this lapidary collection, inviting us to scry his small, gleaming poems for flashes of insight into some of the most expansive spiritual themes of human concern. Across four movements and fifty haiku, Tabatabai draws upon tropes of Western and Eastern traditions to give voice to old-souled longing, contemporary wit, and earnest surprising analogies for Love and the Beloved. Throughout these pages echoes can be heard of a humane and multiethnic literary heritage, of Rumi and Whitman, Shakespeare and Attar, the tale of Gilgamesh, the legendary romance of Layli and Majnun. Whether read through start to finish as a continuous sequence or sampled one at a time for meditative consideration, the poems of Sufi Haiku are certain, like the song of the wistful reed-flute, to summon deep feeling.