Who doesn’t love Rumi? This was a great read and I highly encourage everyone to read this! It’s well written.

Rumi is Rumi, and this collection was very good and I appreciate the collection. Sometimes I think, given some of the previous critiques of translation by "western" gaze,would have appreciated more context!

This volume of the mystic's writings is--according to my sources--based on a 1950s book called Rumi: Poet and Mystic. As such, the translation feels dated and, in a number of cases, problematic. The introduction is excellent, but the biography is stultifying, and I'd expect more of the poems to be present than what's presented here. I can't really recommend this.

I love Rumi, so I was thrilled to receive a copy of a new edition. This is a wonderful collection of poems with a nice forward with background about the life of the author. The translation is a bit hard to get through, but the true meaning of the words came through.

This book may be the most disappointing read of 2023. Not because of Rumi’s poetry (have read it before, loved it to bits), but because of the translation. Having read the blurb, which made no mention of a translator, I made the mistaken assumption that this is a new, more informed translation than some of the others I had read before.

(If you want to understand more about the concerning aspects of Rumi’s poetry being translated into English, read The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi by Rozina Ali in The New Yorker and The Whitewashing of Rumi by Palwasha A. in the Pvblication.)

From the outset, it is made clear that this edition is a reprint of a translation completed in the first half of the 20th century and there are reminders of the age of the translation peppered throughout the book – “‘tis” and “thou” and “art” and all such gems of archaic English, which make it difficult for the contemporary reader to connect with the text. While of course there is a time and place for such language, a translated text is perhaps not one of them – after all, doesn’t such language say more about the time and the worldview of the translator than the author? As a speaker of neither Persian nor Arabic, I can only assume.

Furthermore, the manner in which the translation engages with the religious aspects of Rumi’s work (as delineated in the introduction) could also be argued to be dated and some may even describe it as colonialist and racist. More specifically, emphasis is placed on Rumi being a Sufi rather than a Muslim, thereby enabling the Christian translator and readers to cherry pick convenient wisdom from Rumi’s work, while also sidestepping the more thorny question of Islam’s claim as a legitimate religion succeeding Christianity.

Rumi’s biography and work are multifaceted and lend themselves to many interpretations, and so this may be a perfectly valid one. However, in 2023, perhaps it is time we made (literal and metaphorical) space for translations by voices to whom we were not willing to listen at the time that this particular translation was made.

I absolutely love Rumi, so I was excited to get a copy of this new edition. This definitely lived up to my expectations, a wonderful edition of his poems. The introduction was a great biography of the poet. Thank you so much!

There are so many Rumi collections. It's tough to go wrong with this if you like Rumi, and a good intro for that are not.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

Interesting and well written I just personally couldn’t get into the story. Just a little slow and i think not what I expected when going to read Rumi. Was super excited about it but really started losing me towards the end too. I received an advanced copy for free and am leaving a review voluntarily.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I don't know what separates this edition or translation from others, but it's an interesting read. There's a helpful introduction about Rumi and the history of the poems that provides a lot of context, including the religious tone and inclusion.

The poems themselves span a lot of topics. A lot come back to Rumi's experience or religious beliefs. Most of the poems are pretty short and they are organized by topic.

Overall an interesting read that's a peak into the famous poet's works.

Strange to think, I’m the first to rate and review this particular edition, but people have been reading Rumi for centuries. In fact, strange to think, ‘here I am reading a book from the 1200s’, but that’s one of the most magical things about the written word, isn’t it? The way it can cross time and space.
So why I am reading Rumi? Well, because I’ve been dabbling at reading poetry for a while now, trying to figure out likes (classics, Shakespeare) and dislikes (most modern poetry) and Rumi, famous as he still is, seemed worth checking out. And then this new edition appeared on Netgalley.
Is it the best edition? Who knows? Maybe not. About a fifth of it is taken up by a pretty academic biographical essay. The rest are selected poems in separate categories.
Did the poems work for me? No, to be honest, no, not really.
To be fair, very few things form the 1200s would work for a modern person, the world is simply too different now.
I appreciated where Rumi was coming from and occasionally there was a lovely line or a turn pf phrase. I really liked one poem the name of which is, of course, gone from memory. Something about sleep and forgetting.
Majority of it is very religious, very mystical. All about Rumi’s Sufi faith, his understanding and interpretation of it. Some interesting, some…well, there are some very interesting ideas on corporal punishment in one.
Overall, interesting seems to be the go-to word here. It was an interesting thing to read from a cultural perspective more so than enjoyable. But either way, quick enough to warrant the experiment. Thanks Netgalley.

Beautiful selection of fabulous poems. Loved it and love Rumi and the cover is beautiful as well. This would definitely make a fabulous gift for a collector or even a coffee table book to read and read again.