NCW Libraries

"Rumi's "Divani Shamsi Tabriz" ("The Works of Shams of Tabriz"--Named in honor of Rumi's spiritual teacher and friend) is a collection of lyric poems that contain more than 40,000 verses by America's bestselling poet, and is a classic of Persian literature. Its most familiar form is as a big red book, hence the name. Coleman Barks is famous for his renderings of Rumi's poetry and his work on these particular poems has never been published anywhere....

In this follow-up to her acclaimed 2007 novel The Bastard of Istanbul, Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives-one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz-that together incarnate the poet's timeless message of love.Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary...

"Even the greatest poet was once a child. And so it was with Rumi. When he was young he was enchanted by birds and books. He later became a scholar, but it was the loss of his best friend, Shams, that inspired Rumi to his most important realization: Love is in us and everywhere. The Persian mystic and poet Rumi is one of the best known and most widely read poets in the world. The renowned illustrator Rashin Kheiriyeh herself comes from Iran. With...