Rumi: Hidden Music Maryam Mafi

I went into Barnes & Noble - my home away from home - looking for a book of Rumi poetry. He's the most famous of the Sufi poets, which is the mystical tradition in Islam (just as the Kabballah is the Jewish mystical tradition, etc.) Rumi is currently the best-selling poet in America! Take that, Robert Frost!

My yoga teacher always reads from him, and it reminded me how fascinating his work is. I already have a Rumi book, but it's dense and dry and I was looking for a nicer-looking one. (I'm a designer, so I'm always biased towards good design.)

This one stood out even from the 20 or so Rumi books I saw. It has a beautiful design, and is filled with not only paintings, but calligraphied pages of several of the poems. It's a thick book but not an overwhelming amount of poems. It's also nicely organized into categories. If you're looking for a love poem, search no further - the topic is what he's famous for, specifically love for the Beloved. Lest you tire of the lovefest, there are enough other insights here to make it completely worthwhile.

read August 2004

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