The Illuminated Rumi

To complement Rumi's universal vision, Michael Green has worked the ancient art of illumination into a new, visually stunning form that joins typography, original art, old masters, photographs, and prints with sacred images from around the world.

Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings...

In the mid-thirteenth century, in a dusty marketplace in Konya, Turkey, a city where Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist travelers mingled, Jelaluddin Rumi, a popular philosopher and scholar, met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish. Their meeting forever altered the course of Rumi's life and influenced the mystical evolution of the planet. The bond they formed was everlasting--a powerful transcendent friendship that would flow through Rumi as some of the world's best-loved ecstatic poetry.

Rumi's passionate, playful poems find and celebrate sacred life in everyday existence. They speak across all traditions, to all peoples, and today his relevance and popularity continue to grow. In The Illuminated Rumi, Coleman Barks, widely regarded as the world's premier translator of Rumi's writings, presents some of his most brilliant work, including many new translations. To complement Rumi's universal vision, Michael Green has worked the ancient art of illumination into a new, visually stunning form that joins typography, original art, old masters, photographs, and prints with sacred images from around the world.

The Illuminated Rumi is a truly groundbreaking collaboration that interweaves word and image: a magnificent meeting of ancient tradition and modern interpretation that uniquely captures the spiritual wealth of Rumi's teachings. Coleman Barks's wise and witty commentary, together with Michael Green's art, makes this a classic guide to the life of the soul for a whole new generation of seekers.

Dimensions: 11.32" L x 8.88" W
Details: Hardcover, 128 pages
Author: Coleman Barks

Testimonials

"Rumi has, to the recent amazement of many people in the Western culture as well as the Islamic culture, been able to speak directly to contemporary readers. One of the greatest pieces of good luck that has happened recently in American poetry is Coleman Barks's agreement to translate poem after poem of Rumi. Rumi, like Kabir, is able to contain and continue intricate theological arguments and at the same time speak directly from the heart or to the heart. Coleman's exquisite sensitivity to the flavor and turns of ordinary American speech has produced marvelous lines, full of flavor and Sufi humor, as well as the intimacy that is carried inside American speech at its best."
—Robert Bly

About Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and went to school at the University of North Carolina and the University of California, Berkeley. He taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia for thirty years.

In 1976 fellow poet Robert Bly showed Coleman Barks some scholarly translations of the great Sufi poet Rumi. Bly suggested to Barks that he make a more modern poetic translation, as Bly recalls saying to Barks, "Release these (poems) from their scholarly cages."

Thus with the encouragement of Bly, Bark sought to recast these Rumi poems in a more modern version. Barks does not seek to replicate the rhyme and rhythm of the original Persian. Instead he prefers to render the essence of the poems into free verse. In making these modern versions Barks is attempting to encapsulate the spiritual insight, humour and spirit of Rumi's original masterpieces.

Coleman Barks' versions of Rumi have proved to be remarkably popular making Rumi into one of America's best selling poets. Many consider that this unprecedented interest in the poetry of Rumi is primarily due to Barks' anthology "The Essential Rumi". A selection of the Rumi translations appears in the prestigious 7th edition of the edition of the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.

Coleman Barks is also a poet in his own right. He says of his writings:

"I like translating Rumi and writing my own poems. But in one I have to disappear - with Rumi. In the other I have to get in the way- get my personality and my delights and my shame into the poem."

The father of two grown children and grandfather of three. Coleman Barks is now retired in Athens, Georgia. He has been practising Sufism since 1977 but emphasises that: "Rumi was without boundaries. He would say that love is the religion and the universe is the book, that experience as we're living it is the sacred text that we study, so that puts us all in the same God club."