Rumi: A New Collection

Rumi’s poems are centuries old, but inaccessible to most English speakers except through translation. This new volume seeks to strip away layers of ephemera that have misrepresented the poetry in past translations, returning to the religious and moral roots of the original texts. Unfortunately, this translation loses much of the beauty and mysticism that other translators have captured. This translator takes great pains to imitate the original’s sense of meter and rhyme, apparently, but this results in many stilted, childish verses, usually simple couplets, with awkward, forced phrasing and word choice that continually interrupts the flow and makes it difficult to read and even more difficult to enjoy. It’s a shame because the sentiments are often profound and certainly deserve attention. Some of these poems (only a small sampling of the many poems Rumi authored) are less negatively affected than others, and there are still many gems found here. The real value of this translation is that it allows you to understand the poetry within Rumi’s original context of Islam; these poems are obviously spiritual and suffused with religious belief, a context that has often been disregarded in modern translations, making this book valuable for truly understanding this mystical poet.