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Talk · University of California Television · 2008Rumi and the Play of Poetry
108 min
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Nearly two hours of reading and talking about how the poems came into English.

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Meet Coleman Barks.

In memoriamPortrait of Coleman Barks
Rumi in English · poetry

Coleman Barks

American poet (1937–2026) who taught literature at the University of Georgia for three decades and became the best-known English voice of Rumi. He was a student of the Sufi shaykh Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. He neither spoke nor read Persian and worked from earlier English translations, and his versions have been criticised for leaving Rumi's Islam out of the poems.

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