The essential poems of the inspirational thirteenth-century Persian philosopher, scholar and mystic The founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes, Rumi was also a poet of transcendental power. His verse speaks with the universal voice of the human soul and brims with exuberant energy and passion. Rich in natural imagery, from flowers to birds and rivers to stars, the poems have an elemental force that has remained undiminished through the centuries. Their themes - tolerance, goodness, the experience of God, charity and awareness through love - still resonate with millions of readers around the world. Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

Now in paperback, this is the definitive collection of America′s bestselling poet Rumi′s finest poems of love and lovers. In Coleman Barks′ delightful and wise renderings, these poems will open your heart and soul to the lover inside and out.

′There are lovers content with longing.

I′m not one of them.′

Rumi is best known for his poems expressing the ecstasies and mysteries of love of all kinds - erotic, divine, friendship -and Coleman Barks collects here the best of those poems, ranging from the ′wholeness′ one experiences with a true lover, to the grief of a lover′s loss, and all the states in between: from the madness of sudden love to the shifting of a romance to deep friendship - these poems cover all ′the magnificent regions of the heart′.

"Inside a lover's heart there's another world, and yet another."

Rumi's delightful yet profound poems have inspired countless people throughout the centuries, and Coleman Barks's exquisite renderings of the thirteenth-century Persian mystic are widely considered the definitive versions for our time. Barks's translations capture the inward exploration and intensity that characterize Rumi's poetry, making this unique voice of mysticism and desire contemporary while remaining true to the original poems. In these pages you will encounter the essence of Sufism's insights into the experience of love in all its varieties, life's mystery and wonder, and the nature of both humanity and God.

While Barks's stamp on this collection is clear, it is Rumi's unique vision and voice that leap off the page with a rapturous power that leaves readers breathless. These poems express our deepest yearning for the transcendent connection with the source of the divine: There are passionate outbursts about the torment of longing for the beloved and the sweet delight that come from union; stories of sexual adventures and of loss; poems of love and fury, sadness and joy; and quiet truths about the beauty and variety of human emotion. For Rumi, soul and body and emotion are not separate but are rather part of the great mystery of mortal life, a riddle whose solution is love.

Above all else, Rumi's poetry exposes us to the delight that comes from being fully alive, urging us always to put aside our fears and take the risk of discovering our core self.

"No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil from the face of god."

These fresh, original translations magnificently convey Rumi's insights into the human heart and its longings with his signature passion and daring, focusing on the ecstatic experience of the inseparability of human and divine love. The match between Rumi's sublime poetry and Coleman Barks's poetic art are unequaled, and here this artistic union is raised to new heights.

Considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, The Big Red Book is perhaps the greatest work of Rumi, the medieval Sufi mystic who also happens to be the bestselling poet in America.

Rumi was born in 1207 to a long line of Islamic theologians and lawyers on the eastern edge of the Persian Empire in what is now Afghanistan. In order to escape the invading Mongol armies of Genghis Khan, his family moved west to a town now found in Turkey, where he eventually became the leader of a school of whirling dervishes. It was a fateful day in 1244 when he met Shams Tabriz, a wild mystic with rare gifts and insight. The renowned scholar Rumi had found a soul mate and friend who would become his spiritual mentor and literary muse. "What I had thought of before as God," Rumi said, "I met today in a human being."

Out of their friendship, Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems and short quatrains in honor of his friend Shams Tabriz. They are poems of divine epiphany, spiritual awakening, friendship, and love. For centuries, Rumi's collection of these verses has traditionally been bound in a red cover, hence the title of this inspired classic of spiritual literature.

Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world. A Year with Rumi brings together 365 of Barks's elegant and beautiful translations of Rumi's greatest poems, including fifteen never-before-published poems.Barks includes an Introduction that sets Rumi in his context and an Afterword musing on poetry of the mysterious and the sacred. Join Coleman Barks and Rumi for a year-long journey into the mystical and sacred within and without. Join them in recognizing and embracing the divine in the sublime, in the ordinary, and in us all.

Rowdy, ecstatic, and sometimes stern, these teaching stories and fables reveal new and very human properties in Rumi's vision. Included here are the notorious "Latin parts" that Reynold Nicholson felt were too unseemly to appear in English in his 1920s translation. For Rumi, anything that human beings do--however compulsive--affords a glimpse into the inner life.

Here are more than 40 fables or teaching stories that deal with love, laughter, death, betrayal, and the soul. The stories are exuberant, earthy, and bursting with vitality--much like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." The characters are guilty, lecherous, tricky, ribald, and finally possessors of opened souls.

Barks writes: "These teaching stories are a kind of scrimshaw--intricately carved, busy figures, confused and threatening, and weirdly funny.

This is an entertaining collection from one of the greatest spiritual poets of all time, rendered by his most popular translator.

A comprehensive collection of ecstatic poetry that delights with its energy and passion, The Essential Rumi brings the vibrant, living words of famed thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi to contemporary readers.

Barks recalls that "in June of 1976, Robert Bly gave me a writing assignment: He handed me a copy of A.J. Arberry's translations of Rumi's poems and he said, 'These poems need to be released from their cages' That 'releasing' has taken the form of several books: The Essential Rumi, Unseen Rain, Like This, The Big Red Book, and others. So those poems found a new freedom, a new sky to move in. Now this new 'Sky' for some Rumi poems. Rumi was a great master of the short poem. We should let our souls learn new ways of gliding and soaring in his exalted sky. Thank you, Robert." What makes this collection of Rumi poems by Coleman Barks special and different from his previous volumes is its personal touch. Included are his own reflections on a selection of these poems. His explanation of how the title was chosen and the gratitude he expresses to all who have inspired him is touching.

Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings...

In the mid-thirteenth century, in a dusty marketplace in Konya, Turkey, a city where Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist travelers mingled, Jelaluddin Rumi, a popular philosopher and scholar, met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish.  Their meeting forever altered the course of Rumi's life and influenced the mystical evolution of the planet.  The bond they formed was everlasting--a powerful transcendent friendship that would flow through Rumi as some of the world's best-loved ecstatic poetry.

Rumi's passionate, playful poems find and celebrate sacred life in everyday existence.  They speak across all traditions, to all peoples, and today his relevance and popularity continue to grow.  In The Illuminated Rumi, Coleman Barks, widely regarded as the world's premier translator of Rumi's writings, presents some of his most brilliant work, including many new translations.  To complement Rumi's universal vision, Michael Green has worked the ancient art of illumination into a new, visually stunning form that joins typography, original art, old masters, photographs, and prints with sacred images from around the world.

The Illuminated Rumi is a truly groundbreaking collaboration that interweaves word and image: a magnificent meeting of ancient tradition and modern interpretation that uniquely captures the spiritual wealth of Rumi's teachings.  Coleman Barks's wise and witty commentary, together with Michael Green's art, makes this a classic guide to the life of the soul for a whole new generation of seekers.

This is a book of newly-translated Rumi poems, by the pre-eminent Rumi poet Coleman Barks, to celebrate Rumi's 800th birthday in 2007, the Year of Rumi. The book will have 90 new poems, 82 of them never-before published in any form. Rumi's poetry, in addition to bridging cultures and religions, serves as a bridge to carry the reader into the interior silence and joy of the soul. His poems bridge the gap between conscious knowing and soul-deep understanding, bringing the reader into wholeness through the joy of his words; they are a bridge between the mystery of being human and the mystery of the divine - the Soul Bridge.

The Sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Rumi is most beloved for his poems expressing the ecstasies and mysteries of love in all its forms -- erotic, platonic, divine -- and Coleman Barks presents the best of them 'in this delightful and inspiring collection. Rendered with freshness, intensity, and beauty as Barks alone can do, these startling and rich poems range from the "wholeness" one experiences with a true lover, to the grief of a lover's loss, and all the states in between: from the madness of sudden love to the shifting of a romance to deep friendship to the immersion in divine love. Rumi, the ultimate poet of love, explores all "the magnificent regions of the heart," and he opens you to the lover within. Coleman Barks has made this medieval, Persian-born (present-day Afghanistan) poetic and spiritual genius the most popular poet in America today. This seductive volume reveals Rumi's charms and depths more than any other.

The Lost Words of the Sufi Master and Father of Rumi

Bahauddin, Rumi's father, was not only a major force in the development of Islamic spirituality, but also a deeply influential force in his son's life. In this, the first ever substantial English version of a wonderful but virtually unknown book, Bahauddin proves to be a daring, spiritual genius. His voice comes through the delightful, passionate craft of Coleman Barks, who transforms the Persian translations of John Moyne into fresh spiritual literature.

This Rumi collection features selections from one of the world's great spiritual masterpieces, the "Mathnawi." The "Mathnawi" consists of six volumes of poetry in rhyme--over fifty-one thousand verses--inspired by folklore, the Qur'an, stories of saints and teachers, and sayings of Muhammed. Rendered by Rumi's premier English translators, these excerpts from the "Mathnawi" are presented in American free-verse style.

The poems in"Hummingbird Sleep" move associatively between Coleman Barks's personal experience and his extensive reading, weaving together a wild and eclectic range of material. A discussion of Plotinus, Barks's appearance on PBS "NewsHour," a note Keats once left on Wordsworth's mantelpiece, a splinter in the heel, and a quote from the Upanishads-all make their way into Barks's most recent poems, which achieve intimacy and expansiveness at the same time.

Rumi's short poems have many tones and effects: some of them are quick, joyful and whimsical; some are finely faceted abstract statements; some probe the inward space of patience and longing. Moyne and Barks translated these poems using a free-verse style, connecting these poems with those of great American spiritual poets such as Walt Whitman and Gary Snyder.