A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings

by Coleman Barks

List Price:	~~$21.95~~
Amazon Price:	$14.93 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save:	$7.02 (32%)
Average Rating:
Lowest New Price:	$12.15
Availablitiy:	Usually ships in 24 hours

Editorial Reviews
Product Description

Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world. A Year with Rumi brings together 365 of Barks's elegant and beautiful translations of Rumi's greatest poems, including fifteen never-before-published poems.

Barks includes an Introduction that sets Rumi in his context and an Afterword musing on poetry of the mysterious and the sacred. Join Coleman Barks and Rumi for a year-long journey into the mystical and sacred within and without. Join them in recognizing and embracing the divine in the sublime, in the ordinary, and in us all.

Customers who bought this item also bought

All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4 out of 5 stars

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

Rumi , 2008-09-11
A little Rumi every day is very good for the soul. This English version of Rumi's poetry captures the essence of the original Farsi text.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Daily Rumi Readings, 2008-07-26
Each day's reading has multiple levels to try to comprehend. Lots of fodder for thought and discussion. It would be fun to sit down at dinner each night and have a family discussion about that day's poem.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

A Year With Rumi: Daily Readings, 2008-06-20
I love this book - Coleman Barks does a wonderful job of translating Rumi's poems. I am enjoying working my way through the year!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Speaking across many centuries, 2007-07-15
Coleman Barks is a poet, and his treatments of Rumi bring that poetry into a contemporary context. Like everything that is not pure science, these things are, of course, matters of taste. I am not a Farsi scholar or speaker, but as I understand it - and this is fairly often discussed/hotly debated - the complexities of Sufi poetry in the original languages make it pretty much untranslatable. Here is part of Robet Bly's excellent review of Barks' work, he expresses it so well:

"Rumi has, to the recent amazement of many people in the Western culture as well as the Islamic culture, been able to speak directly to contemporary readers. One of the greatest pieces of good luck that has happened recently in American poetry is Coleman Barks's agreement to translate poem after poem of Rumi. Rumi, like Kabir, is able to contain and continue intricate theological arguments and at the same time speak directly from the heart or to the heart. Coleman's exquisite sensitivity to the flavor and turns of ordinary American speech has produced marvelous lines, full of flavor and Sufi humor, as well as the intimacy that is carried inside American speech at its best."
--Robert Bly

If the Barks translations speak to you, you'll likely love having a daily meditation book, which this is.

29 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

2 out of 5 stars

Mediocre, 2007-01-29
While Coleman Barks is to be commended for introducing many people to Rumi, his renditions of Rumi's poems scarcely reflect the original Persian. Barks, who does not speak Persian (another word for Farsi), took much better translations for AJ Arberry, and rephrased them for his books. In the process, he lost much of the accuracy and most of the character of the original poetry. Those interested in better translations of Rumi should get a hold of Reynold Nicholson's or AJ Arberry's translations.

Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.