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.