Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

You may have heard a show that we did with Brad Gooch about the Persian poet Rumi.

As it happens, we have here in L.A. a student of Persian poetry,

who is translated a medieval Persian poet named Sadi of Shiraz.

He's written a book, my guest, Domenico in genital.

It's called Beholding Beauty.

And whereas former readers of Sadi of Shiraz, thought of him as a didactic poet,

giving advice to kings and princes, telling people about appropriate behavior.

This is, Domenico discovers, an ecstatic and exalted poet whose work, in fact, has never been given the attention it deserves.

And so this book, The Holding Beauty, published by an academic press called Brill, is an amazing introduction

to the world of Persian poetry, especially as reflected in the work of Sadi of Shiraz.

What is ecstatic poetry? It's a kind of poetry, Michael, that pushes the

boundaries of our perception and asks us to think about ourselves as spectators, as beholders

of the world. It's a kind of poetry that asks us to feel the elating pleasure of being alive

and making connections between language and the world.

This is what I think aesthetic poetry can be.

...