A Year with Rumi: Daily Reflections with the Timeless Poetry of Rumi, Featuring 15 Previously Unpublished Poems for Deepening Connection and Inner Journey - Hardcover

Barks, Coleman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006084597X ISBN 13: 9780060845971

Verlag: HarperOne, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

A year with the sensual, mysterious, and deeply spiritual poetry of Rumi, in a translation featuring 15 debut poems—365 poems for your daily dose of inspiration, spiritual healing, and deep self-reflection

This stunning collection is a divine journey across each month of the year, offering 365 daily poetry reflections that with leave you both breathless and hopeful. Poet Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world, and in this volume, he brings Rumi’s words to life, allowing their beacon of light to allow us to reconnect with ourselves, and others, by recognizing the divine in the sublime, in the ordinary, and in us all.

Full of contemplation and deeply moving and profound prose, these poems allow readers to start each day fully present and aware of all the beauty around us, and the innate power and strength we each hold—in every moment of every day. Take a moment for yourself with this daily dose of innate wisdom and positive affirmations for self-love, compassion, and trust in the divine power of the universe and our place in it.

“The poetry feels like it belongs to all. When Rumi died in 1273, members of all religions came to the funeral. Wherever you stand, his words deepen your connection to the mystery of being alive.” – Coleman Barks 

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Coleman Barks is a renowned poet and the bestselling author of The Essential Rumi, Rumi: The Big Red Book, The Soul of Rumi, Rumi: The Book of Love, and The Drowned Book. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers' PBS television series on poetry, The Language of Life and Fooling with Words. He taught English and poetry at the University of Georgia for thirty years, and he now focuses on writing, readings, and performances.

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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.

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A Year with Rumi

Daily ReadingsBy Coleman Barks

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Coleman Barks
All right reserved.
ISBN: 006084597X

Chapter One

January

January 1
A Just-Finishing Candle

A candle is made to become entirely flame.
In that annihilating momentit has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light
describing a refuge.

Look at this
just-finishing candle stub
as someone who is finally safe
from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame
we claim from those.

January 2
A Single Brushstroke Down

Light dawns, and any talk of proof
resembles a blind man's cane at sunrise.

Remember the passage,
We are with you wherever you are.

Come back to that.
When did we ever leave it?

No matter we're in a prison of forgetting
or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,
we are always inside presence.

Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake,
clouded with grief, laughing like lightning,
angry at war, quiet with gratitude, we are nothing
in this many-mooded world of weather
but a single brushstroke down,
speaking of presence.

*The word Allah in Arabic begins with a strong downward mark.

January 3
Children Running Through

I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through
and make faces at me.

January 4
The Elegance of the Ermine

Midnight, and a messenger comes from a prayer niche,
someone as quiet as moonlight,
yet with a torch that burns our sleeping.

A king knocks on the doorkeeper's door
and laughing, leads everyone out to a table.

Our lips tremble at the cup, with the same trembling
as a drop of mercury.

The gentleness of the host is the same
as that that made the elegance of the ermine.

The dry and wet of a love affair,
those tears are identical to the taking in
and giving away of a waterwheel's turning.

The keys that open all gates
are strapped to love's chest.

When a bird is completely broken and still,
it gets removed from the snare.

This list of rude likenesses
does not come near sayingwhat happens in our lives.

January 5
Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence
is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

January 6
Sometimes I Do

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that light becomes this art.

January 7

Don't Let Your Throat Tighten
Don't let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night, before death
closes your mouth.

January 8
There Is Something in Us

Imagine a man selling his donkey
to be with Jesus.

Now imagine him selling Jesus
to get a ride on a donkey.
This does happen.

Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.
If the drunk is already golden,
he can be changed to pure diamond.
If already that, he can become the circling
planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.

Never think that you are worthless.
God has paid an enormous amount for you,
and the gifts keep arriving.

There is something in us
that has nothing to do with night and day,
grapes that never saw a vineyard.

We are all returning

says the Qur'an. Enjoy Shams,
or if you cannot do that, at least
consider what honest people tell you.

January 9
Gnats Inside the Wind

Some gnats come from the grass to speak with Solomon.

O Solomon, you are the champion of the oppressed.
You give justice to the little guys, and they don't get
any littler than us. We are tiny metaphors
for frailty. Can you defend us?

Who has mistreated you?

Our complaint is against the wind.

Well, says Solomon, you have pretty voices,
you gnats, but remember, a judge cannot listen
to just one side. I must hear both litigants.

Of course, agree the gnats.

Summon the East Wind, calls out Solomon,
and the wind arrives almost immediately.

What happened to the gnat plaintiffs? Gone.

Such is the way of every seeker who comes to complain
at the High Court. When the presence of God arrives,
where are the seekers? First there's dying,
then union, like gnats inside the wind.

January 10
A Piece of Wood

I reach for a piece of wood. It turns into a lute.
I do some meanness. It turns out helpful.
I say one must not travel during the holy month.
Then I start out, and wonderful things happen.

January 11
Backpain

Muhammad went to visit a sick friend.
Such kindness brings more kindness,
and there is no knowing the proliferation from there.

The man was about to die.
Muhammad put his face close and kissed him.

His friend began to revive.
Muhammad's visit re-created him.
He began to feel grateful for an illness
that brought such light.

And also for the backpain
that wakes him in the night.

No need to snore away like a buffalo
when this wonder is walking the world.

There are values in pain that are difficult
to see without the presence of a guest.

Don't complain about autumn.
Walk with grief like a good friend.
Listen to what he says.

Sometimes the cold and dark of a cave
give the opening we most want.

January 12
The Night Ocean

We are the the night ocean filled
with glints of light. We are the space
between the fish and the moon,
while we sit here together.

Continues...

Excerpted from A Year with Rumiby Coleman Barks Copyright © 2006 by Coleman Barks. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: HarperOne
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 006084597X
• ISBN 13: 9780060845971
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 432
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Product Safety Manager; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; HarperCollins, Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin 1; D01 C9W8; Irland