DailyGood

For the last 27 years, DailyGood newsletters have offered a daily email that inspires you to respond to life with creativity and kindness. To join a community of 149,675 subscribers, subscribe here.

Jun 20, 2006

"One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that." --Joseph Campbell

America’s Best-Selling Poet

Madonna has set translations of his verse to music, Donna Karan uses it as background to her fashion shows and Oliver Stone wants to make a movie on his life. Who is he? Jalalludin Rumi, the mystic-poet born in Central Asia almost eight centuries ago! The man most responsible for Rumi's current popularity in the West is Coleman Barks, a retired professor of English whose translations of Rumi’s work place emphasis on poetic essence over word-by-word translation in a way that seems to have transcended the limitations of time and space. Today this ancient eastern figure is America's best-selling poet! Time Magazine dives further into what makes Rumi’s life and message uniquely relevant to "the flowering of our humanity".