So boasts Farid al-Din ʿAttar (d. c. 1221) in the concluding section of his most famous poem, the Manteq al-tayr (Conference of the Birds). Boasts and self-encomium were expected, conventional elements of the Persian literary tradition, and poets of all stripes would routinely extol the quality of their verses and the unmatched strength of their talent. What makes this particular boast so interesting, however, is that it is articulated in terms that point not only to ʿAttar's skill as an author or the beauty of his compositions, but also to the work's function vis-à-vis its readers. The Conference of the Birds, a long didactic poem infused with mystical themes, is here likened to the spiritual guide who shepherds novices along the sufi path. In ʿAttar's time, sufi instruction was increasingly delivered by ‘training masters’ who would not only teach and lecture but also intimately manage the lives of their followers, prescribing spiritual exercises for the purification of the soul. By personifying the poem as a guide, ʿAttar imparts agency to his text and a ritualistic quality to the textual encounter: through the act of reading, he seems to suggest, the audience is trained, transformed and elevated towards God. And unlike sufi discipleship, which was limited to those who could commit themselves completely to spiritual training for a period of years or even a lifetime, the Conference of the Birds is imagined as a ‘guide on the path for everyone’. To be sure, this hyperbolic boast should not be taken literally. The guide was a central figure in sufi praxis, and it does not seem likely that ʿAttar was seriously suggesting texts could take the place of personal oral guidance. Nevertheless, this boast would not have been a felicitous form of self-praise if it did not resonate with broader attitudes towards verse, and it shows, at the very least, that it was possible to metaphorically think the work of poetry in such terms.