Synopses & Reviews
Mirabai is a literary and spiritual figure of legendary proportions. Born a princess in the region of Rajasthan in 1498, Mira (as she is more commonly known) fought tradition and celebrated a woman's right to an independent life in her ecstatic poems. Her royal family arranged an early marriage for her, but she felt a marriage to Krishna was more important. As a result, her life became a model of social defiance and spiritual integrity.
During her lifetime, Mira's reputation spread across her country. She was known as a woman of immense talent and devotion. By the time she died in 1550, she was considered a saint. People across India recited and danced to her poems, and they still do today. In this collection, Robert Bly and Jane Hirshfield, two of America's best poets, have created lively English versions of Mirabai's poems, using fresh images and energetic rhythms to make them accessible to modern readers. Their work makes clear that Mirabai's poetry transcends her time and culture.
Columbia University professor of religion John Stratton Hawley provides an afterword to the volume that discusses what is known of Mirabai's life and reputation. With a historian's precision, he shows how Bly and Hirshfield's versions belong to a tradition of reinterpretation and rephrasing that is already centuries old.
Mirabai comes to life through the impressive interpreting of her poems by Bly and Hirshfield. The poems feel as fresh today as they must have felt when this amazing woman sung them herself five centuries ago.
Synopsis
Afterword by John Straton Hawley
A stunning collection of poems by Mirabai, the fifteenth-century female Indian ecstatic poet
Like Coleman Barkss translations of Rumi, this collection of poems by Mirabai will appeal to anyone interested in spiritual poetry. Translator and renowned poet Robert Bly has teamed up with Jane Hirshfield, a leader in the field of feminine spiritual poetry and a highly respected poet herself, to bring us a passionate and inspiring collection of the ecstatic poems of Mirabai.
Mirabai was a figure of legendary proportions. Born a princess in Rajasthan, India, in 1498, Mira (as she was commonly known) fought tradition and celebrated both the body and the spirit in her work. After leaving her royal family, Mira wandered the land and developed a following as a kind of martyr, a poet-saint. She died in 1550 in Dwarka, India, a well-known and well-loved poet throughout her country.
Now, Bly and Hirshfield brilliantly translate this sages work so we may enjoy and learn from her wisdom and devotion. Full of drama, passion, and yearning, any reader will appreciate Mirabais language and will easily become entranced and inspired by the simplicity with which she expresses deep emotion.
About the Author
Robert Bly is the author of The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, a book of poems in the ghazal form, as well as ten other collections of poetry. He has published several books of prose, including Iron John and The Sibling Society. Recently published, The Winged Energy of Delight is a gathering of poems by twenty-two poets from various languages that Bly has translated over the last forty years. Bly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.