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Book review: The Love Poems of Rumi

Book review: The Love Poems of Rumi

Last updated on: October 2, 2020 at 2:39 pm by Bader Saab

Book review: The Love Poems of Rumi 2020-10-02T14:39:42-04:00 Bader Saab

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While we are in the spooky, dark season of the year, I couldn’t avoid asking for certain review copies about a certain poet that never ceases to surprise me. The Love Poems of Rumi, translated by Nader Khalili and edited by Wellfleet Press, was the kind of reading I needed now. Thank a lot to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

“Beauty remains, beauty is eternal, and Rumi knew how to create it with words and ideas, with feelings and images”. Cover taken from Amazon. Cropped.

Rumi is one of the poets I admire the most, and the more I read the more I want. The way he wrote and described a wide myriad of subjects is amazing, and the style he uses is evocative instead of descriptive. He knew how to picture his feeling, thoughts and ideas in a simple, yet deep way. You can read some of them several times, feeling their energy.

Cover taken from Amazon.

The Love Poems of Rumi has more than 100 poems by the Persian poet, each of them describing different faces of love. They describe joy, sadness, happiness, need, obsession and madness. There are a couple of them that are more spiritual, that aim for a less physical, material way of thinking, that didn’t feel very romantic, but more aimed at spiritual or devotional practice, but if love is seen as a religion, why not, then?

While Nader Khalili didn’t do a literal translation, there is still a lot of charm and magic in the poems. You can’t erase beauty just because it’s translated, or if you change some words so they make sense. Beauty remains, beauty is eternal, and Rumi knew how to create it with words and ideas, with feelings and images.

This book gave a really good time and I’m looking forward to read the next ones. Wellfleet edited two more books with Rumi’s poems, each focused on a theme, and I’m sure they will be just as magical as this one. The Love Poems of Rumi is a gift to the soul and the eyes, with all of the pages heavily decorated to match the rhythm and aesthetic of poems, filled with charming colors that make you dream.

The Love Poems of Rumi

Print Length: 128 pages

Publisher: Wellfleet (September 15, 2020)

Publication Date: September 15, 2020

Series: Timeless Rumi

ISBN-10: 1577152174

ISBN-13: 978-1577152170

About the Author

Jalal ad-Din Rumi, commonly known just as Rumi, was a Persian Sunni Muslim poet, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic whose works, written in the thirteenth century, are popular throughout the world today.

About the Translator

Translator Nader Khalili (1936–2008) was a world-renowned Iranian-American architect, author, humanitarian, and teacher. Khalili was also the founder and director of the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth). Khalili was raised by the poetry of Rumi. As a child, his grandmother would recite Rumi’s poetry to lull him to sleep. He later developed a passion for studying and translating Rumi’s works. Rumi’s poetry also became an intrinsic part of Khalili’s architectural career. Inspired by the mystical poetry of Rumi, his architecture was distilled from the timeless principles of this universe and its timeless materials—the elements of earth, air, water, and fire.

About Bader Saab

I’m an Arabic witch and journalist, also with a master’s degree about to be finished on digital research. I have worked as a book reviewer and written about pre-Islamic folklore. You can read more about the author here.

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