become love

~ Coleman Barks

on Rumi

walking within the weather of love

~ Coleman Barks

 on Rumi

 

opening the heart through ecstatic poetry

~ Rumi

with Coleman Barks and David Darling

the lips of insanity

~ Coleman Barks

~ Rumi

opening

~ Coleman Barks and Robert Bly

with Bill Moyers

on Rumi

soul of the world

~ Rumi 
version and reading by Coleman Barks 

coleman barks - one through love

~ Rumi

with Coleman Barks

blessing bow

Here at seventy-four, I am having an idea

what I do pretty-well, what not-so-well.

I dream. I keep a journal of my dreams,

and I put images from them in trance-poems.

I do not write or think about poetry

with a very clear intelligence. I love

certain lines and passages without getting

the whole picture, like rocks thrown against

my door without knowing who’s there.

I found this piece of paper on my bookshelf

dated Sept. 2, 1976. It records a three-part

dream from that night. I recall best

what it felt like there at the end, here

thirty-five years later. I am invited to

a dinner table with Gary Snyder, his family

and friends. We sit in the blessing-bow.

He begins, but I raise my head instead,

and open my eyes, feeling a great love

coming. The air is electrical, full of spirit.

He opens his eyes and sees me reaching

my hand toward him. He takes my hand,

still saying the blessing, which is about

filling with love for the ONE, as we are,

and amen to that. Now the dream

feels like an approach into this flawed

and difficult, hilarious, opening-out time

left before death encloses me in its whatever

it-will-be, a full prostration blessing-bow.

~ Coleman Barks

from the Georgia Review

photo by Robert Foah

poetry of gratefulness

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follow the perfume, not the tracks

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Jalaluddin El-Rumi & Shams El Tabriz from Raphael Rousseau Sason on Vimeo.

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a message from Coleman Barks

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A message from Coleman Barks:

Trying to explain my silence, and my inability, maybe, to say poems in public for an indeterminate while. Please forgive this group emailing. Last Sunday morning (Feb. 27, 2011) I had a stroke. I was talking on the truck Onstar phone to my love Lisa Starr. I began to slur words, and then became completely inarticulate, then fairly coherent, then not, then back to some clarity. Driving down Milledge, I turned left on Springdale and drove myself to the St. Mary's Emergency room (a Gold Plus Stroke Center). They immediately put me on TPA. So I have been tremendously lucky, actually. In three months, my neurologist doctor (Van Morris!) says (by early June), we will see 80% of what improvement (in my half-smile and my speech) is possible. I plan to work with speech therapists, hypnotists, and whoever else, to get better. Larry Dossey and Fran Quinn say prayer is also a big help.Grace and practice. So there is my challenge for the short run. I am mostly sleeping as much as I can (grace) and listening to recordings of my old voice in my kitchen and talking along (practice). I am not answering the phone or the door, or emails (only a few). Please forgive me these reclusive measures. Think of me as an old dormant bear, healing. Lisa is here. Benjamin and Cole and Briny are close by always. Plenty of helpers. I should also tell you too that my cognition is working. I can read and write just fine, and no motor functions are impaired. Arms and legs active and strong. It is really just a slightly droopy right eyelid and my having only half a smile. Speech is, to me, the big problem. It radically comes and goes with its effectiveness. Hopefully, the brain will re-route itself back to normal.Love to all, Coleman

(Please forward this to anyone who might be interested.)

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