Rumi Books: Celebrating the 13th Century Poet

Rumi on Fire Website

a tribute to Mevlana Jalal-e-Din Mevlavi Rumi

Coleman Barks

look here for schedule of Rumi readings by Coleman Barks

Website of Coleman Barks

He lives and writes in Athens, Georgia

Interviews from New Dimensions Radio

download mp3 files for easy listening

Rumi and the Evoloving Soul with Coleman Barks

one hour program description: Rumi has the magnificent idea that human consciousness is a continually evolving thing and that we never stop anywhere. We've dissolved as a mineral into plant life, and from plant life into animal life, and from there into human beings. We are not finished. Barks tells us that Rumi has asked, "What have I ever lost by dying? Why should I fear the next death?" Barks goes on to say, "We've died to all these different ways of being, regions of consciousness, and we will die to this one. But there is no need to fear it because it has always developed into something more magnificent. I just love that idea of the evolving soul." This deep conversation between Michael Toms and Coleman Barks will take you into the heart of approaching the divine and why we all love Rumi's poetry.

The Ecstatic Soul-Jelaluddin Ruim, His Life and Poetry with Coleman Barks

one hour program description: How does a body of poetry written in a remote part of the world find it's way to "best-seller" lists published in leading newspapers in the U.S. over seven hundred years later? What is the compelling quality inherent in great literature that resonates throughout the ages? Coleman Barks, poet and translator of Jelalludin Rumi's poetry, explores the genius, mystery and rapture of Rumi's work; why he has become the most-read poet in America, and what his poetry has in common with the immortal writings of Dickinson, Emerson and Thoreau. "His poetry reflects the transcendent longing that we all feel," says Barks. "Rumi speaks to the times. He sees the divine in grace and kindness, and also in the terrible things," revealing to us the ecstasy that resides at the deepest core of all experience, and the way out of sorrow."

Rumi: Poet of Divine Ecstasy with Coleman Barks

one hour program description: Drunk with the Divine, Rumi wrote twenty thousand poems of mystical, ineffable love of God. "There is a ferocity in his longing that maybe we don't understand," says Barks. Listen in and understand a little better. A wondrous, exhilarating look at the exultant poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi poet, with Coleman Barks.

Rumi: The Supreme Mystical Guide with Andrew Harvey

one hour program description: There is probably no one more qualified to illuminate the life and work of Jalaluddin Rumi, the great thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet, than Andrew Harvey, who possesses the very eloquence and passion he admires in Rumi's work. Harvey likens Rumi to Buddha, Ramakrishna, Shakespeare and Jesus Christ: "For me, I've come to understand the heart of Christ through the heart of Rumi; they seem to me to be linked in the enterprise of bringing all human beings into the fire of the sacred heart." Discover the fire, the madness, the passion and the mystery that is Rumi, revived by a man born to translate his "absolutely lucid but totally molten speech of the Divine heart itself."