{"id":21813,"date":"2015-05-09T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T07:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=21813"},"modified":"2015-05-09T00:01:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T07:01:10","slug":"coleman-barks-and-rumi-what-a-few-lines-of-poetry-taught-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/coleman-barks-and-rumi-what-a-few-lines-of-poetry-taught-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Coleman Barks and Rumi &#8212; What a Few Lines of Poetry (and a Witch) Taught me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/j7HkCMa-RqM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Coleman Barks is a nice guy. And a southerner at that. He&#8217;s the\u00a0amazing artist who&#8217;s been translating Rumi&#8217;s poetry for decades now. I&#8217;d always imagined Barks\u00a0to be a stern scholarly type &#8212; till I emailed him for permission to use a few lines from his Rumi\u00a0<!--more-->translations in my book.<\/p>\n<p>To my surprise, Barks got back to me in no time\u00a0with &#8212; sure, no problem.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday\u00a0I googled him and found this video. And there he was, a kindly southern gentleman type, complete with a bit of a drawl, an open face, and totally immersed in &#8212; and amazed by &#8212;\u00a0the Sufi mystic&#8217;s\u00a0world view.<\/p>\n<h5>Persian Poet, Southern\u00a0Gentleman, American Witch<\/h5>\n<p>The\u00a0video gives you\u00a0just a whiff of the 13th century Persian poet &#8212; and the 21st century Southern gentlemen.<\/p>\n<p>I like Coleman Barks, what little I know of him. And maybe if I spent some focused time with Rumi, I too would be more of\u00a0a mensch.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who have a copy of <strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/WrestlingWithGodBook.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wrestling with God<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, look for Rumi on page 118. There, Wiccan Cerridwen Fallingstar tells of\u00a0embracing\u00a0his poem, &#8220;The Dream That Must Be Interpreted&#8221; in hopes\u00a0of coming to terms with the death\u00a0of her husband and her unborn daughter within a week of each other.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Whatever God is,&#8221; Cerridwen concludes, &#8220;it&#8217;s something that doesn&#8217;t operate the way we do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/encrypted.google.com\/books\/content\/images\/frontcover\/1Jvche5OxB8C?fife=w300-rw\" alt=\"Cover art\" width=\"300\" height=\"446\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Essential Rumi,&#8221; new expanded edition, Coleman Barks, trans, Harper Collins, 2010.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/05\/09\/coleman-barks-and-rumi-what-a-few-lines-of-poetry-taught-me\/\" rel=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/05\/09\/coleman-barks-and-rumi-what-a-few-lines-of-poetry-taught-me\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-21538 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/bon-tempe-lake-w-jean-2-500x319.jpg\" alt=\"A trail alongside Bon Tempe Lake in Marin county, California. Photo by Barbara Newhall\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d always imagined Coleman Barks\u00a0to be a stern scholarly type &#8212; till I emailed him for permission to use a few lines from his Rumi\u00a0translations in my book. <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/05\/09\/coleman-barks-and-rumi-what-a-few-lines-of-poetry-taught-me\/\">Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1208,1457,34,562,1458,1459,1460,1461,53],"class_list":["post-21813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-cerridwen-fallingstar","tag-coleman-barks","tag-dont-miss","tag-islam","tag-mystic","tag-poetry","tag-rumi","tag-sufi","tag-wrestling-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}