This is no April Fool joke friends. I've decided to read all the great poetry of the past 700 years this month. I'm going to start with 'The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám', of course.
I was fourteen when my father first introduced me to Omar Khayyám. One summer night, after dinner he took out one of his old dusty anthologies, I think it was Louis Untermeyer's 'A Treasury of Great Poems' smoked a cigarette and read it to me. Edward FitzGerald's beautiful translation, the rhythm of the rubaiyats, the wine, the grapes, the roses, the potter - I fell in love with them all.
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise now!
— The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
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