Poetry Book Club: Water by Rumi, Translated by Haley Liza Gafori

This monthly book club led by Doug Knowlton is for those who like to read and discuss poetry. It celebrates the integral role of poets and poetry in life and literature. August's selection is WATER by Rumi, translated by Haley Liza Gafori.

We meet in person in the loft of our store in The Mark building at 117 South Pineapple Avenue. The cost is your purchase of the book ($14.95), which can be picked up at Bookstore1 any time before our meeting.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Water expands on Gold, Haleh Liza Gafori's inspired and widely praised translation of the lyric poetry of the Persian mystic Rumi. As in Gold, Gafori renders with fluid grace and moving immediacy these indisputable masterworks of world literature, drawing on the deep well of Rumi’s work to bring out the worldly wit and wisdom that accompany his otherworldly summons. Behold the divine within and without, he tells us. Question the gnawing hunger for material possessions, fame, and fortune, and the fear of emptiness that drives it. Muster the soul, and experience a more compassionate and liberated state of mind. An eco-poet before his time, Rumi celebrates the immensity and wonder of the natural world while warning us of the havoc that greed and the pursuit of power wreak upon us and our world. His flights of dazzling imagery open up heart-stopping glimpses of the divine, challenging readers to wake from oblivion, and above all, to surrender to the transformative power of Love.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR:

Gafori is an acclaimed vocalist and musician as well as a gifted linguist and poet, and in her translations Rumi's poetry sings and beckons as nowhere else. Hers is the work, as the poet Marilyn Hacker has said, "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.”

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