The Essential Rumi (edição 1997)

I was surprised by how boring I found these poems. I think that I'm not really the right market to appreciate Rumi's mysticism and secret gayness, and perhaps its the way Barks has selected and tied together strands of works into more unified poetical structures, but it didn't do it for me and I gave up after sixty pages. ( )

Contains "In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo: More Teaching Stories," which is the earliest version I can find of "The Treasure." Rumi's poem makes it way into The Thousand and One Nights / The Arabian Nights."

Barks and Moyne have translated many of the best-loved poems of Rumi in this book and grouped them into 27 categories, such as The Tavern, Bewilderment, On Silence, and so forth. Since Rumi has left us a huge number of poems, this book makes it easy to locate poems by content. Rea Keech used quotes from Rumi as chapter epigraphs and for the title of his novel A Hundred Veils.

This revised and expanded edition of The Essential Rumi includes a new introduction by Coleman Barks and more than 80 never-before-published poems.

Through his lyrical translations, Coleman Barks has been instrumental in bringing this exquisite literature to a remarkably wide range of readers, making the ecstatic, spiritual poetry of thirteenth-century Sufi Mystic Rumi more popular than ever.

The Essential Rumi continues to be the bestselling of all Rumi books, and the definitive selection of his beautiful, mystical poetry.

I have a great deal of respect for Rumi, and I trust him. He’s never just playing the crowd; he’s sincere.