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Coleman Barks
Barks in 2004
Born	Coleman Bryan Barks (1937-04-23) April 23, 1937 (age 87) Chattanooga, Tennessee
Occupation	Poet
Genre	American poetry
Notable works	Gourd Seed, The Essential Rumi
Spouse	Kittsu Greenwood (1962–?, divorced)
Children	Benjamin, Cole
Relatives	Elizabeth Barks Cox (sister)
Website
www.colemanbarks.com

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Coleman Barks (born April 23, 1937) is an American poet and former literature faculty member at the University of Georgia. Although he neither speaks nor reads Persian, he is a popular interpreter of Rumi, rewriting the poems based on other English translations.

Early life and education

Barks is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He attended the Baylor School, then the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California, Berkeley.

Barks was a student of the Sufi Shaykh Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.

Career

Barks taught literature at the University of Georgia for three decades.

Barks makes frequent international appearances and is well known throughout the Middle East. Barks' work has contributed to an extremely strong following of Rumi in the English-speaking world. Due to his work, the ideas of Sufism have crossed many cultural boundaries over the past few decades. Barks received an honorary doctorate from University of Tehran in 2006.

He has also read his original poetry at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. In March 2009, Barks was inducted into the Georgia Writers' Hall of Fame.

Rumi interpretations

Barks has published several volumes of his interpretations of Rumi's poetry since 1976, including The Hand of Poetry, Five Mystic Poets of Persia in 1993, The Essential Rumi in 1995, The Book of Love in 2003 and A Year with Rumi in 2006.

Controversies

Barks has been criticized for removing references to Islam from the poetry of Rumi.

Original poetry

Barks has published several volumes of his own poetry, including Gourd Seed, "Quickly Aging Here", Tentmaking, and, in 2001, Granddaughter Poems, a collection of his poetry about his granddaughter, Briny Barks, with illustrations by Briny. Harper published his first book of poetry, The Juice, in 1972.

Discography

• Barks, Coleman; Robert Bly (1989). Poems of Rumi (Cassette). Audio Literature. ISBN 0-944993-10-9.
• Barks, Coleman; Hamza El Din; Steve Coughlin (1991). Like This: More Poems of Rumi (Audiobook). Audio Literature. ISBN 0-944993-14-1.
• Barks, Coleman; Dorothy Fadiman (1993). Selections From Open Secret (Poems of the 13th Century Sufi Master Rumi) (Cassette). Coleman and Dorothy.
• Barks, Coleman (1997). Dust Particles in Sunlight: Poems of Rumi (Cassette). Omega Publications. ISBN 0-930872-60-6.
• Barks, Coleman. (1997). The Hand of Poetry (Cassette). Omega Publications. ISBN 0-930872-57-6.
• Barks, Coleman. Mary Sinclair, Lory Messina (1997). The Woman Who Dressed As a Man: Poems of Attar (Cassette). Omega Publications. ISBN 0-930872-59-2.
• Barks, Coleman (2001). I want Burning (CD) (Unabridged ed.). Sounds True Incorporated. ISBN 1-56455-830-4.
• Barks, Coleman; Marcus Wise; David Whetstone; Robert Bly (2001). Rumi: Voice of Longing (CD) (Unabridged ed.). Sounds True Incorporated. ISBN 1-56455-832-0.
• Barks, Coleman (2005). Rumi (CD). Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. ISBN 0-660-19370-1.

Other credits

See also

• Persian poetry

References

1. ^ Barks, Coleman (2004). The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition. Harper Collins Publishers. p. 365. On the more literal level, the texts I work from to produce these poems are unpublished translations done by John Moyne, Emeritus Head of Linguistics at the City University of New York, and the following translations by Reynold Nicholson and A. J. Arberry, the famous Cambridge Islamicists...
2. "Coleman Barks". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2022-05-15.
3. Lawler, Andrew (October 2007). "Walking Around In The Heart Coleman Barks On Rumi, Sensuality, And The Path With No Name". The Sun. Retrieved 2022-06-05.
4. Holgate, Steve. "Persian Poet Conquers America". usembassy.state.gov. Archived from the original on 2007-06-22.
5. Staff writer (May 18, 2006). "University of Tehran grants honorary doctorate to Coleman Barks". Tehran Times. Retrieved 2022-06-05.
6. "Hall of Fame Honorees: Coleman Barks". Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. University of Georgia. Retrieved 2022-06-05.
7. Ali, Rozina (January 5, 2017). "The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved October 25, 2024.
8. "Coleman Barks". Lannan Foundation. Retrieved October 25, 2024.

Further reading

• CBC Radio (September 9, 2007). Tapestry@25: Rumi: Poet Laureate of the Planet Earth (audio). CBC Radio Canada. Audio interview with Coleman Barks and Andrew Harvey, by Mary Hynes of Tapestry.
• Fay-LeBlanc, Gibson (February 2007). "Different Ways of Laughing: An Interview with Coleman Barks". Guernica. Archived from the original on 2007-03-13.
• Ruppersburg, Hugh; Ferguson-Avery, Brian C. (March 18, 2019). "Coleman Barks". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2022-03-07.

External links

• Official website
• Four new translations of Rumi by Barks
• The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi

• 1937 births
• Living people
• American male poets
• American spoken word poets
• American Sufis
• American translators
• American Iranologists
• Poets from Tennessee
• Sufi poets
• University of California, Berkeley alumni
• University of Georgia faculty
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
• Writers from Chattanooga, Tennessee
• 20th-century American poets
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American poets
• 21st-century American male writers