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Monty Python's Reviews > The Essential Rumi
The Essential Rumi
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I was more than a little irritated at this book: I don't want Coleman Barks' interpretations of Rumi, I want Rumi's words. Barks doesn't understand Persian and didn't translate any of Rumi's work, but he takes existing translations of Rumi and reworks them. What Barks is doing is akin to a DJ mixing someone else's remix into their own DJ set, and then trying to pass that off as the original material. If you're going to practice that form of collage, don't market it as anything else; let the collage stand as its own work. The fact that Barks is an acolyte of Robert "strip all subtlety and sensuality from erotic works and make them blatant and hypersexed" Bly doesn't help matters either.
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October 15, 2009
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Sundararaman
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Sep 04, 2016 04:04AM
Hi @Malo Bee. In case you haven't found it yet, the comment thread on a different negative review above recommends Jawid Mojaddedi's translations as being more authentic. The reviews on his books here (/author/show...) also seem to agree with that.
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you couldn't have worded it better. barks was one of the reasons why rumi's poetry has become a victim of spiritual colonization.
Just to clarify one thing: RUMI'S POETRY IS NOT "EROTIC"!!! And one more thing: RUMI WAS A STAUNCH AND A DEVOTED MUSLIM!!! Learn some Persian and see for yourself. Or maybe look for a legitimate scholar who knows Persian and Rumi's poetry. You can even look at the Instagram account, "@sharghzadeh". He does some amazing work regarding debunking false and misleading translations of Rumi's poetry and some other fun things as well.
where do you recommend reading Rumi in English?
