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Article: A Rumi of One's Own.(Persian poetry)
- Article from:
- Los Angeles Magazine
- Article date:
- October 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Emmis Publishing L.P. dba Los Angeles Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE PERSIAN POET'S OLD VERSE SPEAKS TO THE NEW AGE HEART
THE NAME RUMI SOUNDS unfortunate in English. A suitcase can be roomy, or a bedroom slipper; poetry, as we've been taught to understand it, demands more elegant tailoring. Strictly speaking, though, it's not the 13th-century Persian poet's name at all. A good Muslim, he was born Mohammed. The last bit of his later title, Jalal al-Din Rumi, refers to the fact that the Turkish peninsula, where he lived from his teens on, was a former province of Rome (Rum) and still famous for its Western ties. But as The Soul of Rumi (HarperSanFrancisco, 448 pages, $28), Coleman Barks's latest collection of the Sufi master's ...