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The Essential Rumi
Jelaluddin Rumi and Coleman Barks
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"Why I read The Essential Rumi is because -- well, I've heard a lot of Rumi over the years. At weddings, it's become almost like a standard thing. A lot of people quote Rumi in that kind of wedding or romantic setting.
I'm far from any kind of expert on Rumi, and I hope it'll get other people to speak about him, but Rumi wrote a long time ago; and I think it was something like the 1200's. I could be off on that, but it's around that time. He was like in the area of Turkey, so he was like a scholar who became a mystic and wrote down what he felt was -- I think stuff he was channeling almost and wrote down poetry that some of it was very mystical, spiritual, I guess religious in a way but not as organized religion.
He writes about life, being alive, being a human being, how to be a better person, how to be more alive and in the moment, and grateful for where you are, and recognizing sort of the beauty around us.
I wasn't crazy about this collection, to be honest. In fact, I'm extremely disappointed in this collection. This collection is edited by Coleman Barks, and he's like the guy who edits, I mean he translates Rumi into English. He's a poet himself, and he's famous in a way for making Rumi famous to the modern American audience. So I've read other of his translations and enjoyed it, but this particular book I -- I don't know. I keep hoping to fall in love with it. I like the cover. You know what they say, "Don't judge a book by its cover." It's hard to know really what Rumi's saying I find in this collection a lot whereas usually I know what he's saying.
I would not recommend this collection to most anyone. If someone was really in love with Rumi and just couldn't get enough, I'd say sure. Out of five, I'd have to give this book 2 stars."
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