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Loading... The Essential Rumi (Penguin Classics)by Jelaluddin Rumi (otherwise under Jalal Al-Din Rumi)Series: The Essential Religious Series
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  tuckerresearch | Feb 16, 2009 |  Passionate, ecstatic poems from the 13th century Sufi poet, Jelaluddin Rumi. Coleman Barks gets these translations just exactly right. If you are going to take a book of poems to a desert island, take this one. (And, maybe, the Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda.) I take my well-thumbed copy on my travels. I can open it anywhere and be immediately transported into a different place. If you ever run across a recording of Barks reading this poetry with his jazz band, snatch it up. It will be the best present you ever bought yourself. (  ) co_coyote | Mar 31, 2008 | THE ESSENTIAL RUMI is a more than worthy introduction to the enchanted spiritual poetics of Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi’s famed mad dancing and his inspired utterances of pure genius gave birth to a major religious order known today as the Whirling Dervishes. His writings have influenced not only Persian literature but world literature and world spirituality. His richly inspired work has been translated and published in languages all over the globe. In English alone, there are more than a dozen writers and scholars who frequently publish volumes of Rumi’s work. Interpretations of his poetry have been recorded as musical compositions by such diverse individuals as motivational speaker Deepak Chopra and famed music producers Graeme Revell and Roger Mason, among numerous others. In addition, calendars, biographies, web sites, and discussion groups all based on the life and passion of Rumi are in plentiful supply. Rumi himself in many parts of the world is greatly revered as a saint. When he died, representatives from every major religion hailed him as one of their own. Aberjhani author of VISIONS OF A SKYLARK DRESSED IN BLACK and ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE ( ) Aberjhani | Dec 28, 2006 | Beautiful free translations of the Sufi master that dispense with rhyme and meter, but capture the Zen-like quality of Rumi's parables. ( ) tuckerresearch | Sep 11, 2006 | Beautiful free translations of the Sufi master that dispense with rhyme and meter, but capture the Zen-like quality of Rumi's parables. ( ) tuckerresearch | Sep 11, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0062509586, Hardcover)No translator could do greater justice to the gorgeous simplicity of Rumi's poetry than Coleman Barks has done here. These exquisite renderings of the 13th-century Persian mystic's words into American free verse capture all the "inner searching, the delicacy, and simple groundedness" that characterize Rumi's poetry while remaining faithful to the images, tone, and spiritual message of the originals. Barks's introductions to each of the 27 sections (described as "playful palimpsests spread over Rumi's imagination," and "meant to confuse scholars who would divide Rumi's poetry into the accepted categories") are themselves wonderful achievements of a poetic imagination; searching explanations of unfamiliar concepts and funny stories provide colorful background and frame the selections as no dry historical exegesis could.While Barks's stamp on this collection is clear, it in no way interferes with the poems themselves; Rumi's voice leaps off these pages with an ecstatic energy that leaves readers breathless. There are poems of love, rage, sadness, pleading, and longing; passionate outbursts about the torture of longing for his beloved and the sweet pleasure that comes from their union; amusing stories of sexual exploits or human weakness; and quiet truths about the beauty and variety of human emotion. More than anything, Rumi makes plain the unbridled joy that comes from living life fully, urging us always to put aside our fears and take the risk to do so. As he says: "The way of love is not / a subtle argument. / The door there is devastation. / Birds make great sky-circles / of their freedom. / How do they learn it? / They fall, and falling, / they're given wings." --Uma Kukathas (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:05 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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The new poems in the expanded edition are just as good as the old. (