The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems

by Rumi, Coleman Barks (Translator), John Moyne (Contribution by), Nevit Ergin (Contribution by), A J. Arberry (Contribution by), Reynold Nicholson (Contribution by), M. G. Gupta (Contribution by)

Overview

Inside A Lover's Heart There's Another World, And Yet Another

Rumi's masterpieces have inspired countless people throughout the centuries, and Coleman Barks's exquisite renderings of the thirteenth-century Persian mystic are widely considered the definitive versions for our time. Barks's translations capture the inward exploration and intensity that characterize Rumi's poetry, making this unique voice of mysticism and desire contemporary while remaining true to the original poems. In this volume readers will encounter the essence of Sufism's insights into the experience of divine love, wisdom, and the nature of both humanity and God.

While Barks's stamp on this collection is clear, it is Rumi's voice that leaps off these pages with a rapturous power that leaves readers breathless. These poems express our deepest yearning for the transcendent connection with the source of the divine: there are passionate outbursts about the torment of longing for the beloved and the sweet delight that comes from union; stories of sexual adventures and of loss; poems of love and fury, sadness and joy; and quiet truths about the beauty and variety of human emotion. For Rumi, soul and body and emotion are not separate but are rather part of the great mystery of mortal life, a riddle whose solution is love. Above all else, Rumi's poetry exposes us to the delight that comes from being fully alive, urging us always to put aside our fears and take the risk of discovering our core self:

No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil from the face of God.

These fresh, original translations magnificently convey Rumi's insights into the human heart and its longings with his signature passion and daring, focusing on the ecstatic experience of the inseparability of human and divine love. The match between Rumi's sublime poetry and Coleman Barks's poetic art are unequaled, and here this artistic union is raised to new heights.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060604523
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/17/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	47,519
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Coleman Barks is a renowned poet and the bestselling author of The Essential Rumi, Rumi: The Big Red Book, The Soul of Rumi, Rumi: The Book of Love, and The Drowned Book. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers' PBS television series on poetry, The Language of Life and Fooling with Words. He taught English and poetry at the University of Georgia for thirty years, and he now focuses on writing, readings, and performances.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

A Green Shawl: Solomon's Far Mosque

In the early 1990s — it was December — I was sitting in meditation under the green dome that houses Rumi's tomb in Konya. Someone came up and gave me a green shawl. As you might imagine, I treasure it still and use it in my meditation. I love the wrapped, rapt feeling.

Going in, feeling the limpid contentment in being oneself and the endless discovery there: the green shawl is that, reminiscent of a child's tent-making delight, the rainy-day times when you spread a sheet over a card table and a chair, anchored it with safety pins, and crept under the shelter where imagination could flower. How we forget this tent making for such long spans is a mystery in itself.

Rumi tells of Solomon's practice of building each dawn a place made of intention and compassion and sohbet (mystical conversation). He calls it the "far mosque." Solomon goes there to listen to the plants, the new ones that come up each morning. They tell him of their medicinal qualities, their potential for health, and also the dangers of poisoning.

I suggest we all get green shawls. "Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you" ("Entrance Door"). Mary's hiding place and the great warehouse ("What Was Told, That") are other images of the listening tent, where conversation thrives and love deepens.

Rumi often hears it as the birdlike song-talk that begins at dawn under the dome of meditation. Build a far mosque where you can read your soul-bookand listen to the dreams that grew in the night. Attar says,

Let love lead your soul.
Make it a place to retire to,
a kind of cave, a retreat
for the deep core of being.

Entrance Door

How lover and beloved touch is
familiar and courteous, but there
is a strange impulse in that to
create a form that will dissolve

all other shapes. Remember, the
entrance door to the sanctuary is

inside you. We watch a sunlight
dust dance, and we try to be that

lively, but nobody knows what music
those particles hear. Each of us

has a secret companion musician to
dance to. Unique rhythmic play, a

motion in the street we alone know
and hear. Shams is a king of kings

like Mahmud, but there's not another
pearl-crushing dervish Ayaz like me.

What Was Told, That

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Mary's Hiding

Before these possessions you love slip away, say what
Mary said when she was

surprised by Gabriel, I'll hide inside God. Naked in
her room she saw a form

of beauty that could give her new life. Like the sun
coming up, or a rose as it

opens. She leaped, as her habit was, out of herself
into the divine presence.

There was fire in the channel of her breath. Light and
majesty came, I am smoke

from that fire and proof of its existence, more than
any external form.

I want to be where
your bare foot walks,

because maybe before you step,
you'll look at the ground. I want that blessing.

Would you like to have revealed to you
the truth of the Friend?

Leave the rind,
and descend into the pith.

Fold within fold, the beloved
drowns in its own being. This world
is drenched with that drowning.

Imagining is like feeling around
in a dark lane, or washing
your eyes with blood.

You are the truth
from foot to brow. Now,
what else would you like to know?

The Husk and Core of Masculinity

Masculinity has a core of clarity, which does not act
from anger or greed or

sensuality, and a husk, which does. The virile center
that listens within takes

pleasure in obeying that truth. Nobility of spirit,
the true spontaneous energy

of your life, comes as you abandon other motives and move
only when you feel the majesty

that commands and is the delight of the self. Remember
Ayaz crushing the king's pearl!

The Soul of Rumi. Copyright © by Coleman Barks. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

What People are Saying About This

Jerry Stahl

“Rumi will transform you, in ways you didn’t know you needed transforming.”

Editorial Reviews

Rumi will transform you, in ways you didn’t know you needed transforming.

Jerry Stahl

Coleman Barks’s Rumi translations [make] Rumi’s raptures accessible in language at once ordinary and lyrical.

Yoga Journal

The best of Rumi’s beautiful and challenging imagery.

Booklist

The gold of Rumi pours down through Coleman’s words. The words leap off the page and dance!

Jack Kornfield

The Islamic mystical poet Rumi (1207- 1273) improvised the evocative poems which his followers wrote down. Translator Coleman Barks's The Essential Rumi won the Persian writer American fans, some of whom revere the poet as a religious guide. Now Barks is back with The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems. The giant volume includes part of Rumi's 64,000-line Masnavi, as well as many short poems and Barks's copious, informal, personal commentary. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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