For my final project, I want to write a poem about The Divan of Hafez, that I used for my midterm. When I first saw it, it didn’t feel like just an old object. It felt alive. The red ink, the gold borders, the small tears in the pages all seemed to tell a story. I want my project to be a way of answering that feeling with my own words. My idea is to write a poem that speaks to the book, almost like a conversation. I want to describe what it felt like to hold it, to look at its pages, and to think about all the people who touched it before me. The poem will be in English, but I want to keep the rhythm and softness that I feel when I read translations of Hafez’s. Each part of the poem will focus on something from the manuscript the red ink, the miniature paintings, the worn leather cover. These small details will become symbols for love, time, and memory. The purpose of my project is to show that The Divan of Hafez is more than a historical artifact. It is a living bridge between people and generations. Writing a poem feels like the best way to express that connection.
BOOKS!!
ECL 596. Fall 2025. Professor Jessica Pressman with Anna Culbertson
I love that you’re continuing with your midterm project and will do so in a way that allows you to be creative and speak back to your object of study. Will you use the first part of your essay as the midterm, biography of a book and then create a poem that speaks back to that work you did earlier in the term? I would like to see a bit more of an analytical frame here, a thesis statement about what your creative project will do and show. That can come later, of course, after some more thinking and research, but I think that is part of what’s missing here. In other words, it won’t be enough to just write the poem, you will need to close read and analyze your poem and explain what specifically it shows about the book at hand. Yet, I very much like this idea and am eager to see how it turns out!