By Maryam Mafi
I went into Barnes & Noble - my home away from
home - looking for a book of Rumi poetry. He's the most famous of the
Sufi poets, which is the mystical tradition in Islam (just as the Kabballah
is the Jewish mystical tradition, etc.) Rumi is currently the best-selling
poet in America! Take that, Robert Frost!
My yoga teacher always reads
from him, and it reminded me how fascinating his work is. I already
have a Rumi book, but it's dense and dry and I was looking for a nicer-looking
one. (I'm a designer, so I'm always biased towards good design.)
This one stood out even from the 20 or so Rumi books
I saw. It has a beautiful design, and is filled with not only paintings,
but calligraphied pages of several of the poems. It's a thick book but
not an overwhelming amount of poems. It's also nicely organized into
categories. If you're looking for a love poem, search no further - the
topic is what he's famous for, specifically love for the Beloved. Lest
you tire of the lovefest, there are enough other insights here to make
it completely worthwhile.
read August 2004
7