by Jalal al-Din Rumi
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Product Description
A comprehensive collection of ecstatic poetry that delights with its energy and passion, The Essential Rumi brings the vibrant, living words of famed thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi to contemporary readers.
Amazon.com
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
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Real Men Read Rumi, 2008-08-10
Real men drink beer from bottles, stand by their buddies in bar fights, and read Rumi (though would not brag about it).
This is probably the best of the collection and when my hormones are raging, reading Rumi instantly calms and brings me back to my senses. Not a big art lover, but if books are art, this is a Mona Lisa.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
this is a transcendence, not a 'translation', 2008-07-20
don't get hung up on the hang ups of scholars and other strait-jacket types. this stuff is rumi translated, not literally, but soulfully. and that method usually fails.
not here.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Should Own This, 2008-02-13
There are certain books everybody should own and keep in their personal library and this is one of them. This book speaks to you in different times of your life. Sometimes you get one poem and not another and then later the other poem will come alive for you. I love Rumi's work and have loved it before it became fashionable.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Love this book, 2008-01-18
My first book of Rumi, made me love him and now I have lots of his poetry so I highly recommend this book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Great poet but controversial translation, 2007-11-10
Almost all the great religions have a mystical side, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism. Gnosticism, Khabalah, the Nagas within Hinduism, Vajrayana Buddhism, Sufism, the Eleusine Mysteries within ancient Greek religion, Hermetism (a fusion of western and eastern mysticism by the third century, A.D., philosopher, Iamblichus), Avesta, Taoism, Confucianism, and even Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry all had mystical sides.
Sufism is one of the mystical traditions within Islam, of which there are a number not well known in the west. Rumi is one of the greats in that tradition, and one of the few eastern poets I've read (such as Omar Khayam) and there is no doubt he is one of the greatest poets of all time, whether western or eastern. I enjoy Rumi's poems but have to agree with a reviewer that the translations may not be the best since the author admits he knew no Persian, and Sufis are quite definite on the point that their poems are very precise and even technical in their wording and phraseology. As I'm not an expert I'll leave the final opinion on this book to the experts and those more knowledgable than I. Fortunately, as there are other translations you should also try one of those and compare those renderings with this book. But whichever way you decide to go, Rumi should be essential reading for anyone wishing to expand their literary and intellectual horizons beyond the "usual suspects."
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