Customer Reviews

Rumi: Hidden Music

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Rumi has the power to make love poetry unusually accessible. Though his words are ancient, his themes are timeless. This is a book that you will carry with you in travels, on the plane, the bus, etc. because you truly do not tire of his message. His poetry is the kind you want to memorize. It is comforting, but also can be disturbingly accurate and makes you consider your own inadequacy towards love that you may not have considered before. This is not love in the sense of eroticism, per-se. Rather it is an introspective approach to how one approaches and applies love to the world around them. You will read these works more than once. The addition of his paintings helps give the reader a more thorough appreciation for his light and magic. His art has the same ethereal quality as his words, and gives you a tranquil visual aid to calm the mind in its preparation towards the text. Rumi helps us approach the world with a kinder heart & a more forgiving spirit; a concept that we are vastly losing sight of in this quick-fix aggressive world we embrace all to readily.

Rumi, a 13th century Sufi poet, writes of love in the Sufi sense - that is to say, love to the divine, and a recognition of the divine in all things - in a rooftop, a cup, dust. On another level, Rumi also writes of the nature of love - uttery surrendering yourself, giving yourself over completely. The collection of poems here are wonderful, in a beautiful translation. The art included is also beautiful, although they are by one of the translators and not by Rumi himself, as another reviewer thought.

The book, in short is a thing of beauty - as love is. Highly recommended.

As already pointed out very nicely by other reviewers, there is no word to describe Rumi's love poems. Still, it has to be clear that Rumi's Love is not an Earthly one, but a Spiritual one, pointing back to the Source, to the Creator.

The breaks in between the poems of this book help a lot the reader to meditate on the poetry. This is a very good idea to space the poems like that. Poems are food for your Soul, so to get the full benefit from it better eat slowly to help digestion...

A beautiful book with genuine spiritual depth: the art, the pages' texture, the power and lift in the poems - and their lay-out. (Pairs well with Paul Twitchell's Stranger by the River.)