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


"Perhaps the world's greatest spiritual poet--the gold of Rumipours down through Coleman's words. The words leap off thepage and dance!"

Body Mind Spirit
"The Essential Rumi is a rare and precious book that will stir the hearts of Rumi devotees and win many new converts."

Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart
"Perhaps the world's greatest spiritual poet--the gold of Rumi pours down through Coleman's words. The words leap off the page and dance!"

Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions
"If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi's poetry is truly remarkable."

Book 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.

Language Notes
Text: English
Original Language: Persian

About the Author
Coleman Barks is a renowned poet who taught English and creative writing at the University of Georgia for many years. His appearances on Bill Moyers's two PBS poetry series brought him wide acclaim. He now focuses on writing and on performing Rumi poetry in readings and concerts.

Excerpted from The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks, Jalal Al-Din Rumi, John Moyne, Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
The Tavern:Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have to Take Me HomeOn the TavernIn the tavern are many wines-the wine of delight in color and form and taste, the wine of the intellect's agility, the fine port of stories, and the cabernet of soul singing. Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. The grapeskin of ego breaks and a pouring begins. Fermentation is one of the oldest symbols for human transformation. When grapes combine their juice and are closed up together for a time in a dark place, the results are spectacular. This is what lets two drunks meet so that they don't know who is who. Pronouns no longer apply in the tavern's mud-world of excited confusion and half-articulated wantings.But after some time in the tavern, a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, a longing for the source, and the drunks must set off from the tavern and begin the return. The Qur'an says, -We are all returning. " The tavern is a kind of glorious hell that human beings enjoy and suffer and then push off from in their search for truth. The tavern is a dangerous region where sometimes disguises are necessary, but never bide your heart, Rumi urges. Keep open there. A breaking apart, a crying out into the street, begins in the tavern, and the human soul turns to find its way home.It's 4 a.m. Nasruddin leaves the tavern and walks the town aimlessly. A policeman stops him. "Why are you out wandering the streets in the middle of the night?" "Sir," replies Nasruddin, "if I knew the answer to that question, I would have been home hours ago!"Who Says Words with my Mouth?All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words with my mouth?Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups. That's fine with us. Every morning we glow and in the evening we glow again.They say there's no future for us. They're right. Which is fine with us.A Community of the SpiritThere is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.Drink all your passion, and be a disgrace.Close both eyes to see with the other eye.Open your hands, if you want to be held.Sit down in this circle.Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd's love filling you.At night, your beloved wanders. Don't accept consolations.Close your mouth against food. Taste the lover's mouth in yours.You moan, "She left me.""He left me."Twenty more will come.Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought!Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.There's a strange frenzy in my head, of birds flying, each particle circulating on its own. Is the one I love everywhere?Drunks fear the police, but the police are drunk too.People in this town love them both like different chess pieces.A Children's GameListen to the poet Sanai, who lived secluded: "Don't wander out on the road in your ecstasy. Sleep in the tavern."When a drunk strays out to the street, children make fun of him.He falls down in the mud. He takes any and every road.The children follow, not knowing the taste of wine, or how his drunkenness feels. All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.God said,"The world is a play, a children's game, and you are the children."God speaks the truth. If you haven't left the child's play, how can you be an adult?Without purity of spirit, if you're still in the middle of lust and greedand other wantings, you're like children playing at sexual intercourse.They wrestle and rub together, but it's not sex!The same with the fightings of mankind. It's a squabble with play-swords. No purpose, totally futile.Like kids on hobby horses, soldiers claim to be riding Boraq, Muhammad's night-horse, or Duldul, his mule.Your actions mean nothing, the sex and war that you do. You're holding part of your pants and prancing around, Dun-da-dun, dun-da-dun.Don't wait till you die to see this.Recognize that your imagination and your thinking and your sense perception are reed canes that children cut and pretend are horsies.The knowing of mystic lovers is different. The empirical, sensory, sciences are like a donkey loaded with books, or like the makeup woman's makeup.

ANNOTATION

"If Rumi is the most-read poet in Americay today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi's poetry is truly remarkable."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

SYNOPSIS