Authoritative edition of Hafizs most important poems including original Persian and brilliant English translationsRecent translations of Hafiz have been controversial. Omid Safi an Islamic studies scholar at Duke notes that there are so many fake translations of Hafiz floating around offering amp8216versionsamp8217 that have no earthly connection to anything that the Persian poet and sage of Shiraz named Hafiz ever said. Elizabeth Gray offers us something different poetic translations rooted in close readings of the original Persian developed in consultation with a native speaker scholar.A amp8220ghazalamp8221 is usually understood to mean lyric poetry concerned with love. But what had been a courtly love lyric concerned with wine and physical beauty became in the hands of Sufis like Farid udDamp237iacuten amp8216Attar and Jalal udDamp237n Rumi a way to describe a mysticamp8217s relationship with God. Ghazals also became a means of veiling from theological and political conservatives the Sufi belief in the possibility of an intuitive personal union with God.Hamp225aacutefiz became the greatest of all Sufi poets called the amp8220Tongue of the Invisibleamp8221 and the amp8220Interpreter of Mysteries.amp8221 His command of the ghazalamp8217s traditional imagery and themes blends eroticism mysticism and panegyric into verse of unsurpassed beauty. His eighty ghazals are presented in this book. Persian originals appear on facing pages to brilliant English translations of Gray and Anvar.In the afterword Persian scholar Daryush Shayegan notes how amp8220there is no antagonism between the earthly wine and the divine wine just as there is none between profane love and the love of God since one is the necessary initiation to the other.amp8221