Rumi: Poet of Divine Ecstasy

by Coleman Barks

Drunk with the Divine, Rumi wrote 20,000 poems of mystical, ineffable love of God. "There is a ferocity in his longing that maybe we don't understand," says Barks. Listen in and understand a little better. A wondrous, exhilarating look at the exultant poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet, with Coleman Barks. Coleman Barks taught poetry at the University of Georgia for many years, and is translator of The Soul of A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems (HarperSanFrancisco 2001); The Illuminated The Five-Times Prayer of the Sufis (Ballantine Wellspring 2000); co-translator of The Essential Rumi (HarperSanFrancisco 1997) and co-translator (with John Moyne) of two volumes of Rumi poems, Unseen Rain (Threshold Books 1986) and Open Secret (Threshold Books 1984);

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

About the author

Coleman Bryan Barks was an American poet and literature faculty member at the University of Georgia for 30 years. Although he neither spoke nor read Persian, he was a popular interpreter of Rumi, rewriting the poems based on other English translations.

Barks's work has contributed to an extremely strong following of Rumi in the English-speaking world. Due to his work, the ideas of Sufism have crossed many cultural boundaries over the past few decades. Barks received an honorary doctorate from University of Tehran in 2006.

In March 2009, Barks was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Reviews

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coleman Barks discusses Rumi and his poetry. He also reads several of Rumi’s poems. Intensely interesting.