This book is an ornament for the ages.
It offers something for both the high and low.
If you came sad and frozen to this book,
its hidden fire will blaze and melt your ice.
Yes, these verses are magic:
they grow more potent with each reading.
They are like beauty under a veil
that reveals its loveliness slowly.
—Attar, from The Conference of the Birds, translated By Sholeh Wolpé (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018)
The Conference of the Birds by 12th century Iranian Sufi mystic poet Attar is celebrated as a masterpiece of Persian literature and a foundational spiritual text of Sufi Islam.
The Conference of the Birds (Manteq al-Tayr) is a magnificent allegorical poem about our human struggle, both physical and spiritual, and the soul’s search for meaning. The poem recounts the perilous journey of the world’s birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf—a mythical mountain that wraps around the earth—in search for the mysterious Simurgh, their sovereign. Attar’s beguiling anecdotes and humor intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, and the religious with the metaphysical. Reflecting the entire evolution of Sufi mystic tradition, Attar’s poem models the soul’s escape from the mind’s rational embrace.
The central idea in the Sufi movement is that the soul, in the prison of the body, awaits release. Once freed, it returns to the source which is the Creator. This reunion can be experienced while we are still bound by the body through looking inward and through purification. Attar’s use of everyday details, stories, and historical chronicles is a masterful technique he used to animate the deeper meanings of what we consider “reality.” This technique was later adopted by future master poets, namely Hafez and Rumi. In fact, Attar had a profound and central influence on Rumi in particular: he wrote,
Attar traveled through all the seven cities of love
While I am only at the bend of the first alley.
Sholeh Wolpé, poet and translator of Attar, will take you through the journey of the Birds in three inspiring sessions. She wrote a play and an opera based on The Conference of the Birds, which were featured in a spotlight produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Spotlight. Her new collection of Attar’s most inspiring verses, The Invisible Sun (Harperone, 2025), is now also available.
Class meets from 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. ET on Thursdays, October 9, 16, and 23.
Wolpé will be using her 2018 translation of the poem. Students should read the texts as listed below before each session.
Session 1
-Page 1 to Page 37 (optional)
-Page 39 (The Birds Confer and Make Excuses) to Page 163 (The Birds Voice Their Fears)
Session 2
-Page 163 to Page 249 (The Seven Valleys)
Session 3
-Page 249 to Page 365
This live, virtual course is structured to encourage active participation. Registrants will receive Zoom links a week before each session, a day prior to each session, and the morning of each session. All recordings will be made available within forty-eight hours of a session. All recordings and class materials will remain available for thirty days after the final session
Scholarship applications must be submitted by Thursday, October 2 at 5 p.m. ET.
For information on how to register, how to receive the member discount, how to apply for a scholarship, how to access recordings and course materials, and more, please visit our FAQ page.
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian American poet, playwright, and librettist. Her literary work includes seven collections of poetry, several plays, five books of translations, and three anthologies, as well as texts and librettos for the choir and opera. Her most recent works of poetry include her translation of The Invisible Sun by the twelfth-century Sufi mystic poet Attar (HarperCollins, 2025) and Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse (University of Arkansas Press, 2022).
Registered attendees get access to live session links, recordings of past sessions, and all seminar materials.