The Glance: Songs of Soul Meeting

Rating:
Summary: It will make your soul sing
Review: Coleman Barks has done a supurb job of selecting and translating Rumi's poetry. The words will move you to tears, the imagry inspire you, the lyric sound of the prose bring joy to your heart. It is a simply magnificient collection and translation. The volume is slender, containing only a handful of poems, but the impact of them is weighty. If you own only one book of poetry - or even only one book by Rumi, this is the collection I recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Barks won't bite, and he doesn't have to.
Review: I may not know a cake from a cow-pie, but if Coleman is cooking I'll take two helpings please! And serve it up on audio...straight from the lover's lips is best...images clear as mountain air, accent thick as pine tar, and voice sweet as peach nectar. YUM...YUM That's the way I like it. During my first listen, I felt the music on this audio to be a little too over-powering for some of the readings, but it has grown on me. Now I love even the quirkiest of the pieces. He may not be the chef for you, but he is the word gourmet for me.

Rating:
Summary: Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Review: In our culture descriptions of things are often confused with the things themselves, emotion or any deep feeling is thought of as spiritual and very isolated examples of larger processes are trotted out and obsessively promoted as the whole process. This book, which has some wonderful poems, suffers from all the above faults. If this were simply a book of poems by Barks detailing his personal experiences, I'd like it a lot more. But it purports to be something different: a Sufi perspective by Rumi. Well, to quote the contemporary Sufi Teacher Idries Shah: "Not every round thing is a cake!" To pull out the more intense, excitable elements in Rumi and arrange them to fit a cultural predisposition for the bizarre and supernatural, brings to mind Rumi's own admonition. "Don't look at my outward form, but take what is in my hand." Here we have the descriptions and the exotic (the outward form) but none of the intent(the specific tools designed to free the human being from the prison of appearances). A much more balanced perspective on Rumi and his work is contained in the Octagon Press book by Afzal Iqbal--The Life & Work of Jalaluddin Rumi.