A mystical poet with a message for our turbulent times

By Louise Ritchie

When Coleman Barks speaks about Islamic mystic Jalaluddin Rumi’s poetry, the Georgia man whose Rumi translations have sold more than a quarter of a million copies virtually sighs, “All you can do with his poetry is inhabit them.

“You can enter them and move into a region of consciousness that is very free and very connected to the spirit.”
Barks, renowned as being one of the premier translators of Rumi’s work, will recite Rumi’s work Oct. 19 at The Moon. It has been 30 years since poet Robert Bly encouraged Barks to make modern translations of Rumi’s poetry.

In a phone interview, Barks tells what Rumi’s words have meant to him. “People have what they call soul books, sacred texts, the reading of it puts you back into your deepest self – in your soul and makes you more creative and open hearted. Rumi’s poems were soul text and soul books like that for me.

“I read it late every afternoon and rephrased it into being hopefully true to the information and spiritual information.”
His voice resonant with a timber derived from his Chattanooga birthplace and 34 years of teaching poetry at the University of Georgia, Barks reverently recites Rumi’s words:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing/There is a field. /I’ll meet you there. /When the soul lies down in that grass /The world is too full to talk about/ Ideas, languages, even the phrase ‘each other’ /Doesn’t make any sense.”

Bark continues, a seamlessly transitioning into his own words as he elaborates on the poem, “You might call that ‘love.’ You might call that ‘the open heart.’ Now as I get to almost 70, it makes sense to say two people meet in the heart, the heart being a region inside and also outside.”
One of the poets most beloved by Americans, Rumi was an enlightened being, says Barks, adding that the thirteenth-century poet’s words were “radical” in his own time, and are important for these modern times.

“Rumi says if you think there’s an important division between Jew, Christian, Muslim, you are making a division between your heart and how you act in the world,” he says.
Adds Barks, a poet himself, “Rumi can be a bridge between cultures at this time when we can’t seem to respond any way but violently.”

For ticket information, contact Southern Springs: 878-8643, or visit www.southernsprings.org/#Events.