Rumi's poems are fun and creative and talk about everything under the sun. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for some fun analogies!

Coleman Barks truly frees Rumi's poetry and lets it sing. Each poem is simple and beautiful, vivid and makes your soal soar. These are my favorites to read before bedtime.

3.5

Coleman Barks’ translation of Rumi was a formative book for me as a high school student who was in love with poetry, questioning my own faith, and starting to become interested in travel and cultural perspectives that differed from my own. I first encountered Rumi’s work at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2002, and bought this book either shortly before or after. If it’s any indication of how important this was to me, I had a quote from one of Rumi’s poems on my first Facebook profile when I started college a few years later.

It was really interesting to come back to the same copy I read as a teenager with a whole new set of experiences and views. I still love Rumi’s writing just as much or more than I did over a decade ago. He is cryptic, insightful, and irreverent – I get the feeling from reading this translation that he didn’t take himself too seriously, which was appealing to me as a teenager and remains enticing today. Rumi’s poetry manages to be thought provoking and simple at the same time. Anyone can read and understand it on a basic level, but every reading brings you something new. I hope to come back to this collection for many years to come.

"Beyond opinion and judgment, undistracted by guilt,
I am walking strong and steadily home,
not timid or uncertain,
with my eyes splendidly clear,
all one pearl of gratefulness, no fear."

On the tavern
In the tavern are many wines ... Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. The grapeskin of ego breaks and a pouring begins.
...
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.

May 5, 20

Dropped at 201/354

I don't understand poetry