Rumi: Selected Poem (Penguin Classics)
by Rumi, John Moyne
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Moyne, RumiTranslator: Coleman Banks
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-07
ISBN: 0140449531
Number of pages: 310
Publisher: Penguin Books
Book Reviews of Rumi: Selected Poem (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: American Beaknik Poetry
Summary: 3 Stars
Coleman Barks and his publishers are guilty of false marketing: this book would accurately be described as a collection of Barks' poems "very loosely inspired by Rumi", rather than a collection of Rumi's poems "translated by Barks". These are not poems by Rumi. These are nothing like poems by Rumi.
What Barks has done is to read some translations of Rumi's poems. And then, taking those English renditions as a kind of vague source-material, he's written a collection of entirely new beatnik poems, with as tenuous a connection to the source material as one would expect from such a process.
In Barks' *interpretations*, every quality of Rumi that makes Rumi the poet that Rumi is - has been lost. Not a trace of Rumi's art remains (not his rhythm, his celebrated locutions, not his imagery, not his evocational use of the past-tense - not even his religious instructions).
As for Barks' poems, they're charming, albeit in the manner of a voluble American hippie, entertaining the tourists outside Haight Ashbury. In other words, they read like a cross between Robert Bly and Walt Whitman. There's also a lot Allen Ginsberg in there. It's not difficult to see why these poems are so popular in America - they are as American as American apple-pie. Buy this if you want an original and accessible collection of American beaknik poems. I enjoyed reading them. But if you want more authentic translations of Rumi, try A.J. Arberry (although be warned that the more authentic translations are a lot less accessible).
Summary of Rumi: Selected Poem (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.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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