A vibrant selection of poems by the great Persian mystic with groundbreaking translations by an American poet of Persian descent. Rumi’s poems were meant to induce a sense of ecstatic illumination and liberation in his audience, bringing its members to a condition of serenity, compassion, and oneness with the divine. They remain masterpieces of world literature to which readers in many languages continually return for inspiration and succor, as wellas aesthetic delight. This new translation by Haleh Liza Gafori preserves the intelligence and the drama of the poems, which are as full of individual character as they are of visionary wisdom.
Marilyn Hacker praises Gafori’s new translations of Rumi as “the work of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and, best of all, a marvelous poet in English.”
A selection of original translations of the great Persian poet by an up-and-coming American translator and musician.
Up until the age of 40, the 13th century Persian sage Rumi was chiefly known as a preacher and a man of serious and sober views. At that point, however, an encounter with the poet Shams of Tabriz left him utterly transformed. Rumi became a poet himself, a poet in singleminded pursuit of ecstatic illumination and liberation whose poetry is meant to induce a similar revelation in his audience, bringing them to a condition of serenity, compassion, and oneness with the divine. Rumi's poetry is a masterpiece of world literature to which readers in many languages continue to return for inspiration and succour as well as aesthetic delight. This new translation preserves the radical intelligence and the ecstatic drama of poems that are as full of individual character as they are of visionary wisdom.
Marilyn Hacker, one of America's finest contemporary poets, praises Haleh Liza Gafori's new translations of Rumi as "the work of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and, best of all, a marvelous poet in English."
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s new translations of Rumi are the work of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and, best of all, a marvelous poet in English.”
- Marilyn Hacker
, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets 2008-2014, author of
Winter Numbers “Haleh Liza Gafori’s
Gold is everything Rumi was himself—sacred, profane, laugh out loud funny, deeply earnest, demotic, and yes, Persian. There’s a rich fluency here not just in idiom but in gesture, in spirit. It’s uncanny to encounter eight-hundred-year-old verse this urgent: “Misers rule. Generosity fades from memory. Still, your eyes see. Your heart is full.” Gafori’s Rumi teaches me how to wander into mystery — “humble as soil”—without galloping toward some hasty and inorganic conclusion: “A barren moon shines. A sour world smiles. What do I know but the light shining down?” What a gift this is, what gold.”
- Kaveh Akbar, Poetry editor at
The Nation, Author of
Calling a Wolf a Wolf and
Pilgrim Bell) “Haleh Liza Gafori’s energetic translation highlights the timelessness of Rumi’s work, delivering unforgettable phrases. Rumi’s introspective nature…cosmic vision…and deeply contemplative yet accessible poems star in this worthy translation.”
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Publishers Weekly “Haleh Liza Gatori’s ecstatic and piercing translation has lifted a veil, bringing Rumi closer into the quick of our present. Each poem is a divine invitation. Free your mind. Drown in love.”
- V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of
The Vagina Monologues and
The Apology “Rumi’s beautiful melding of wildness, insight and untrammeled joy has found a true, unerring voice in Haleh Liza Gafori, whose own fine abilities as a poet bring these hallowed Persian, poetic gifts anew into 21st century English.”
- David Whyte, author of
The Three Marriages and
Consolations “I have been longing for these translations of Rumi’s poems my whole life. Haleh Liza Gafori has taken Rumi’s original Farsi text and unleashed its fire. My soul soars reading each one. Sublime, clean, crisp, deep, luxurious, funny, soft, and kind, these translations are a great and graceful gift.”
- Elizabeth Lesser, author of
Broken Open and
Cassandra Speaks “These are the Rumi translations we’ve been waiting for! In
Gold, translated by Persian-American poet/singer Haleh Liza Gafori, meanings and images hurtle us towards love and ecstasy, just as Rumi intended. You won’t read these words so much as dance with them. Hang on tight as they begin whirling. Unbuckle your seat belt as they take flight. Pure Gold!”
- Bob Holman, author of
The UnSpoken and
Life Poem"In clear, shimmering language, neither simplified nor obscurantist, Gafori renders the ecstatic core of Rumi's vision in an American idiom that both honors the Islamic background of the poems and insists that what we mean by "surrender" cannot be delimited by any psychology or religious tradition.
- Leonard Schwartz, author of
The New Babel: Towards a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises 
