Selected Poems - Softcover

Rumi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140449531 ISBN 13: 9780140449532

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2004

Synopsis

Previously published as The Essential Rumi, Rumi's Selected Poems is translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne in Penguin Classics.

Thirteenth-century Persian philosopher, mystic, scholar and founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes, Jelaluddin Rumi was also a poet of transcendental power. His inspirational verse speaks with the universal voice of the human soul and brims with exuberant energy and passion. Rich in natural imagery from horses to fishes, flowers to birds and rivers to stars, the poems have an elemental force that has remained undiminished through the centuries. Their themes - tolerance, goodness, the experience of God, charity and awareness through love - still resonate with millions of readers around the world.

Coleman Barks's vibrant translation conveys the directness and originality of Rumi's poetry. This edition is divided into thematic sections, each with an introduction, and includes a biographical essay on Rumi.

Called 'Jelaluddin Rumi' by the Persians and Afghans, Rumi (1207-1273) was born in Balkh, Afghanistan, then part of the Persian Empire. He was the greatest mystical poet of Persia, famous for his didactic epic Masnavi-ye Ma'navi (Spiritual Couplets), a treasure-house of Sufi mysticism.

If you enjoyed Selected Poems, you might like Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'Coleman Barks has provided a version of Rumi that sparkles and never flags ... both and otherworldly'
John Ryle, Guardian

About this title

Review

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 modern free verse capture all the "inner searching, the delicacy, and simple groundedness" that characterise 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 colourful 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 yearning 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

About the Author

Rumi was a thirteenth century Persian philosopher.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0140449531
• ISBN 13: 9780140449532
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336