Paul Farley's "For the House Sparrow, in Decline", meanwhile, tenderly imagines "a roofless world where no one hears your cheeps / only a starling's modem mimicry / will remind you how you once supplied / the incidental music of our lives''. Once again birds provide a metaphor for the crisis of our time. If poems are like birds' nests, shelters from the storm pieced together from odds and ends, what is a poetry anthology but a nest of nests? Poets have ­always been birdwatchers, to varying degrees of expertness: Coleridge's nightingale, in Lyrical Ballads, is the first record of that species in Somerset, and John Clare provided 65 first descriptions of the birds of Northamptonshire. A contemporary twitcher-poet such as Peter Reading frequently apostrophises his Zeiss binoculars, and Helen Macdonald is an avian researcher and falconer.

Attar, Harvey & Masani, Conference of the Birds: A Seeker's Journey to God, Weiser Books, 2001, ISBN 1-57863-246-3 Sholeh Wolpe's stage adaptation of The Conference of the Birds was premiered by Inferno Theatre and Ubuntu Theater Project (now Oakland Theater Project), in Oakland California in November 2018. [6] Illustrations [ edit ] Beside the symbolic use of the Simorgh, the allusion to China is also very significant. According to Idries Shah, China as used here, is not the geographical China, but the symbol of mystic experience, as inferred from the Hadith (declared weak by Ibn Adee, but still used symbolically by some Sufis): "Seek knowledge; even as far as China". [4] There are many more examples of such subtle symbols and allusions throughout the Mantiq. As an opening line for a nineteenth-century poem, ‘By what mistake were pigeons made so happy’ stands out for its directness, its sheer oddness, and its unusual choice of subject-matter (doves in poetry, why yes; pigeons? Um…). James Henry (1798-1876) was overlooked during his lifetime and it was only more than a century after his death that his work was discovered. ‘Pigeons’ offers something very different from Henry’s contemporaries, whether Keats or Tennyson or even Browning.

Nott, Charles Stanley (tr.) (1954), The Conference of The Birds: Mantiq Ut-Tair; a Philosophical Religious Poem in Prose (1sted.), London: The Janus Press , reissued by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1961. Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Folio from an illustrated Persian manuscript dated c.1600. Paintings by Habiballah of Sava (active ca. 1590–1610), in ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper, dimensions 25,4 x 11,4cm. [7] Warren's handling of medieval material in a way that reminds us of both the innate value of the species we run the risk of destroying and the dangers of human exceptionalism is a welcome and, moreover, a significant contribution to the field." Heilpern, John (1978)[1977]. Conference of the Birds. The Bobs Merrill Company, Inc. ISBN 0-672-52489-9

In modern poetry, birds have been just as visible – and not simply as ornament. Ted Hughes found in birds the symbols of his own concerns, first in the shining, terrible, power of The Hawk in the Rain whose "wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet" and later going as far as to forge his own gospel story in Crow. Valley of Poverty and Annihilation, where the self disappears into the universe and the Wayfarer becomes timeless, existing in both the past and the future. For more classic poetry, we recommend The Oxford Book of English Verse – perhaps the best poetry anthology on the market. Continue to explore the world of poetry with our tips for the close reading of poetry, these must-have poetry anthologies, and these classic poems about horses.Valley of Unity, where the Wayfarer realizes that everything is connected and that the Beloved is beyond everything, including harmony, multiplicity, and eternity. Wolpé further writes: "The book is meant to be not only instructive but also entertaining." [3] English translations [ edit ]

Scene from The Conference of the Birds in a Persian miniature. The hoopoe, center right, instructs the other birds on the Sufi path.

Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

FitzGerald, Edward (tr.) (1889), Bird Parliament: A Bird's-Eye view of the Bird Parliament, London and New York: Macmillan and Co. Valley of Wonderment, where, entranced by the beauty of the Beloved, the Wayfarer becomes perplexed and, steeped in awe, finds that he has never known or understood anything. Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière adapted the poem into a play titled La Conférence des oiseaux ( The Conference of the Birds), which they published in 1979. Brook toured embryonic versions of the play around rural Africa during the visit of his International Centre for Theatre Research to that continent in 1972–73, before presenting two extremely successful productions to Western audiences—one in New York City at La MaMa E.T.C., and one in Paris. John Heilpern gives an account of the events surrounding the early development of the play in his 1977 book Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa. [5] Farid Ud-Din-Attar, The Conference of The Birds - Mantiq Ut-Tair, English Translation by Charles Stanley Nott, First published 1954 by The Janus Press, London, Reissued by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1961, ISBN 0-7100-1032-X

Leaving aside Baudelaire's "The Albatross", a Dafydd ap Gwilym poem and some Scots, Armitage and Dee have chosen not to venture beyond English, which is a pity. Australia and New Zealand too might have been more richly represented. Where birds, not poets, are concerned, I was sorry not to see a poem on the bittern, an elusive enough bird as it is without it going missing from anthologies too: Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna's "An Bonnán Buí" ("The Yellow Bittern") is a beautiful song available in English versions by Seamus Heaney and others, and would have suited this book perfectly. Irish poet Caitríona O'Reilly's name is unfortunately misspelled throughout. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem. The Conference of the Birds or Speech of the Birds ( Arabic: منطق الطیر, Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr, also known as مقامات الطیور Maqāmāt-uṭ-Ṭuyūr; 1177) [1] is a Persian poem by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, commonly known as Attar of Nishapur. The title is taken directly from the Qur’an, 27:16, where Sulayman ( Solomon) and Dāwūd ( David) are said to have been taught the language, or speech, of the birds ( manṭiq al-ṭayr). Attar’s death, as with his life, is subject to speculation. He is known to have lived and died a violent death in the massacre inflicted by Genghis Khan and the Mongol army on the city of Nishapur in 1221, when he was seventy years old. [2] Synopsis [ edit ] Any list of the best bird poems should probably include something from Ted Hughes’ experimental but defining volume, Crow (1970). Hughes wrote the cycle of poems about ‘Crow’ in the late 1960s, and it was a far more experimental and avant-garde book than Hughes’s previous volumes of poetry. ‘King of Carrion’ is an accessible but representative poem from this enthralling if unsettling collection. Hughes doesn’t shy aware from the Darwinian violence inherent in the natural world. But these are quibbles. With its lashings of Clare, Hardy and Edward Thomas, The Poetry of Birds is a powerful statement of the continuing life of the Romantic tradition, through Lawrence and Hughes down to Kathleen Jamie and Alice Oswald today. Clare remains supreme among British bird poets, and "To the Snipe" is one of the centrepieces here. More than just a description of the snipe's watery home patch, the poem becomes a miniature ecosystem in its own right:My theory is that birds provide a natural metaphor for the song all poets aspire to. We envy them their ease of expression, as their song provides a bridge into the mysteries of a world the animal in us fondly half-remembers. Persian text of The Conference of Birds, with recitation in Persian by members of the Chamekhan Group. Fariduddin Attar in Great Poets of Classical Persian" by R M Chopra, 2014, Sparrow Publication, Kolkata, ISBN 978-81-89140-75-5. In his soaring exploration of the avian, Warren urges us to look beyond the human preoccupations of medieval poetry to see how writers have persistently attempted to...bridge the gap between human and bird, at least temporarily, by inviting us to listen more closely to the melody those 'smale foweles' make all around us."