For Love of the Dark One: Songs of Mirabai [Paperback]

Mirabai (Author), Andrew Schelling (Translator, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

Erotic, rebellion, spiritual thirst, a strong hint of early feminism, and a steaming animal passion, these are what makes Mirabai's songs irrepressible four centuries after she sang them. To open this book is to get close to the oldest kind of song, sweet and bitter, sage and spontaneous. And to remember why we're on earth.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Another Night %sleepless
Another Night Without Sleep
Binding My Ankles With Silver
Clouds %i Watched As They Ruptured
Come To Me, Cloud
Come To My Bedroom
Come, O Aloof One
Crooked Fate -- %crooked Decree!
Dancing Before Him
Dark Friend, What Can I Say
Dark One
The Dark One's Love-stain
Dark One, %how Can I Sleep?
Dark One, %where Are We Going?
Don't Block My Way, Friend
Down By The River A Flute!
Dreadful Cuckoo, %who Said You Could Sing About Love
Drunk, Turbulent Clouds
Friend, %though The World Sleeps
Friend, I See %only The Dark One
Friend, Without That Dark Raptor
A Glimpse Of Your Body
Go! Go To That Land
Gone Mad, Sister
Good Fortune, %my Prince
Guide This Litle Boat
Having Wet Me With Love
He Has Stained Me
He's Gone %friend, And I Suffer
Hear My Plea, Dark One, I Am
How Bitter Is Carnival Day
Hungry Eyes And I %crave Him
I Am Your Slave
I Scrawl %endless Letters And Send Them
I Will Sing Out His Beauties!
I've Tasted It, Drunk One,
In My Dream, Sister
It's A Curse -- %i Don't Even
Let Them Gossip
Life On This Planet Is Fragile
Listen, Friend, %the Dark One Laughs
Murari Yanked %at My Skirt,
My Dark One
My Lover's Shadow
O Creatures Of Earth
O Mind, %praise The Lotus Feet That Don't Perish
O Sweet Tongued Enchanter
Oh I Saw Witchcraft Tonight
Out In A Downpour
Over The Trees
Passion, %passion's The Dagger That
Passion, %passion's The Dagger That
The Plums Tasted
Refuge In You, Dark One
Remember Our Pledge
Shame Would Kill %these People
Sister, %i Went Into Market
Sister, The Dark One Won't Speak To Me
Sister, The Enchanter
Snared Me -- %and Now The Enchanter Has Vanished!
Stumbling About, %a Clay Pot On Her Head
Take A Yogin
Take My Arm %and Keep Up Your Promise!
Take My Message
Ten Thousand Thanks
Terrible Solitude %festival Day
Thick Overhead %clouds Of The Monsoon
This Infamy, O My Prince,
This Is The Seal Of %dark Love
Unable To Live Since
Wake Up, %my Lover Of Women,
What Is This Anger
When Can I Meet %the Dark Lord?
Why Life, %why Again,
Why This Impulse
Wolfish Eyes Devouring The Dark One
Yogin, A Single Glimpse
Yogin, Don't Go
Yogin, I Did Not Touch
You Pressed Mira's Seal Of Love
Your Colorful Kingdom %just Bores Me.
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Hohm Press; Revised edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 093425284X
• ISBN-13: 978-0934252843
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,773,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not all estactic poetry is Sufi, May 7, 2000

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For Love of the Dark One: Songs of Mirabai (Paperback)

Mirabai's poetry has remained alive orally in Hindu, Sikh and Muslim traditions. Her's is a poetry of Krishna - an Indian diety relatively well known in the West if only for his place in the Mahabharata.

This translation of Mirabai's poetry from a Prakrit (a vernacular language rather than the formal Sanskrit - i.e. as if in Provencal rather than Latin) uses free verse to put her poems in our contemporary poetry conventions. Andrew Schelling did a superb job - the poetry retains the South Asian religious sensibility while creating poems that stand on their own merit.

A taste: "But life on this crazy planet is torment, / day and night torment. / Mad, raked by separation -- / drifting from country to country -- / look at Mira's black hair / it's turned white.

If you enjoy Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir,Emre then you will enjoy this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you can get your hands on this beautiful litte book, DO!, July 7, 2009

By 

Lasara W. Firefox Allen "Author." (Northern California.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: For Love of the Dark One: Songs of Mirabai (Paperback)

My mom gifted me with this amazing, powerful, lovely, devastating, sweet little books of bhakti poems many years ago. I still treasure it.

The poetry is amazing, as are the paintings, by Mayumi Oda.

It has, at times, been like a little Bible to me. And I consider Mirabai both a teacher and a saint. It was through this book that I came to want to know her story, and through her story that I first heard of mergence with the divine - or rainbow body, as it's called in Tibetan Buddhism. At the end of Mirabai's life, she entered fully into the body of the Beloved, leaving behind nothing but her clothing, bones, and hair.

Her love for and devotion to her Lord was beyond reason, and be going beyond reason, became all the reason in the world.

Read Mirabai's words, and let them rend you. And let them heal you.

4.0 out of 5 stars Some beautiful passages, but..., November 9, 2010

By 

Cymry (California, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: For Love of the Dark One: Songs of Mirabai (Paperback)

There are many lyrical passages here that are truly lovely and memorable.

I wouldn't recommend this as your only collection of Meera poems, tho.

Half way through, her endless complaining gets old.

Other translations are kinder.