Rumi: Selected Poem (Penguin Classics) Summary and Reviews

Rumi: Selected Poem (Penguin Classics)
by Rumi, John Moyne

Rumi: Selected Poem (Penguin Classics)
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Book Summary Information

Author: John Moyne, Rumi
Translator: Coleman Banks
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-07
ISBN: 0140449531
Number of pages: 310
Publisher: Penguin Books

Book Reviews of Rumi: Selected Poem (Penguin Classics)

Book Review: American Beaknik Poetry
Summary: 3 Stars

Coleman Barks and his publishers are guilty of false marketing: this book would accurately be described as a collection of Barks' poems "very loosely inspired by Rumi", rather than a collection of Rumi's poems "translated by Barks". These are not poems by Rumi. These are nothing like poems by Rumi.

What Barks has done is to read some translations of Rumi's poems. And then, taking those English renditions as a kind of vague source-material, he's written a collection of entirely new beatnik poems, with as tenuous a connection to the source material as one would expect from such a process.

In Barks' *interpretations*, every quality of Rumi that makes Rumi the poet that Rumi is - has been lost. Not a trace of Rumi's art remains (not his rhythm, his celebrated locutions, not his imagery, not his evocational use of the past-tense - not even his religious instructions).

As for Barks' poems, they're charming, albeit in the manner of a voluble American hippie, entertaining the tourists outside Haight Ashbury. In other words, they read like a cross between Robert Bly and Walt Whitman. There's also a lot Allen Ginsberg in there. It's not difficult to see why these poems are so popular in America - they are as American as American apple-pie. Buy this if you want an original and accessible collection of American beaknik poems. I enjoyed reading them. But if you want more authentic translations of Rumi, try A.J. Arberry (although be warned that the more authentic translations are a lot less accessible).

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