Room for Rumi

Everybody has their favorite clever little inspiring poet. For some it’s Kahil Gibran, the prophet guy. Others it’s that guy who wrote the Alchemist, or Goethe or Hafiz. Or even Emily Dickenson and ole Bobby Frost. They’re pithy and quotable without requiring much context.

Two Afgan things I like: Rumi and killer rugs.

Me, I find myself digging up some Rumi.

Rumi is the patron saint of hippies.  He’s a Sufi mystic.  Wth is that? It’s a 13th Century Islamic science "whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God".  Jalal ad-Din Rumi is their number one Afgani. 

That’s not a hat.  It’s his gigantic brain in his huge cranium.

Of course all his writing was written in Persian squiggles, but Coleman Barks is the most popular translator and as far as I know he does an admirable job.  I haven’t cross checked his work yet, I’m a trusting reader.  The only thing that really, really bugs me about his translations is the complete ambivalence about punctuation.  It’s run-on sentences galore.  And the format does not tie itself up into a nice little package of poetry that I can decipher, ala Shakes or even Whitman who owns the stream of consciousness style.

Despite the format barriers, I find a connection to the greater human experience when I read Rumi.  They’re like little inspiring proverbs with little or no admonitions; they just present a slightly unusual approach to common ideas. 

There’s so little I know about Rumi.  I need to take a class.  He jumps all over the place using all kinds of allusions – Christ, Mary, the garden, some one named Beloved.  I have little frame of reference to approach the writing but when I just jump in it resonates.  Life goal: take class on Rumi.  Have any of you ever done it?  Could a trip to Burning Man yield the same results?  Could the hippies stop squatting on Rumi and give him over to the general deodorant wearing populace?

And while I love the concepts and the presentations and so much about this work, let me hereby object to the use of “Lover”.  That word gives me the heebeejeebees.  It reminds me of this:

And also?  You gotta hand it to Rumi (and Coleman Barks) for naming the poetry a collection of Ecstatic Poems.  If I ever make a collection of poems I think I shall name it Whop-bob-a-loo-ba A Whop-bam-boo Poems.  I sounded that out.  You did too.  It’s ok.