Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks is a renowned poet and best-selling author. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers’s 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.

---

Islam/Middle East

The Essential Rumi

Talking Points

COLEMAN BARKS is a renowned poet and best-selling author. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers’s 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.

Description

Coinciding with the anniversary of Rumi’s 800th birthday, this book offers a collection of 90 poems by the Sufi  master—83 of them never before published in any form. The Essential Rumi is the indispensable compendium of Rumi’s most important and beloved poetry. Recently revised and
expanded, the new edition contains eighty-one previously unpublished Rumi poems and a new introduction by Coleman Barks.

---

Islam/Middle East

The Drowned Book

Ecstatic and Earthy Reflections of Bamauddin the Father of Rumi

Talking Points

COLEMAN BARKS is a renowned poet and best-selling author. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers’s 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.

Description

The Drowned Book is the first ever English language version of a wonderful but virtually unknown book by Rumi’s father, Bahauddin—who himself was a great Persian Sufi  teacher and a comparably insightful, daring, poetic spiritual genius.

---

Islam/Middle East

Rumi: The Big Red Book

The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship

Talking Points

Coleman Barks is a renowned poet and the bestselling author of The Essential Rumi, The Soul of Rumi, Rumi: The Book of Love, and The Drowned Book. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers’s 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.

Description

Rumi’s “Divani Shamsi Tabriz” (”The Works of Shams of Tabriz”—named in honor of Rumi’s spiritual teacher and friend) is a collection of lyric poems that contain more than 40,000 verses by America’s bestselling poet, and is a classic of Persian literature. This book represents over thirty-three years of Coleman Barks’s work on Rumi’s seminal classic.

---

Spirituality

Rumi: Bridge to the Soul

Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart

Talking Points

COLEMAN BARKS is a renowned poet and the bestselling author of The Essential Rumi, The Soul of Rumi, Rumi: The Book of Love, and The Drowned Book. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers’s 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.

Description

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.

---