|
|
|
|
An interview with Coleman Barks
Poetry writing isn't for "Momma's boys" according to famed translator and poet Coleman Barks. "Forget about feeling safe when you write," he asserted. "Forget about finding shelter and step out! Let's get in the ocean - dive into the dangerously deep part of life!" Barks discussed his newly released book Rumi the Book of Love from his home in Athens, Georgia. He laughed readily and heartily, full of passion and emotion, as he talked and challenged many traditional notions about love. He spoke about a love for truth and beauty. "Feeling beauty is a necessity for truth telling," he declared. "I don't think you should write unless you feel the beauty of truth and the truth of beauty." To some people, the words may appear like a riddle. To Barks, who popularized Jalaluddin Rumi - the 13th Century Sufi poet known world wide for his mystic expressions of ectasy and love, it is a way of life. "Love in the Western World [reference to Denis DeRougement] is straining toward the lover - the separation toward it," he explained. "Rumi spoke of love as an annihilation of the personality into something larger that has no name. It's like a dew drop going into the ocean." Trying to keep up with Barks' references and images was like attempting to understand the entire mystical world of Rumi in one reading. "Western love is like the ache of leaving at the Russian train station - it's identifying with an idea that can't quite be consummated. It's Romeo and Juliet. It's the lived-out love that doesn't quite get shown." Rumi writing must be "felt as a salt breeze traveling inland," Barks writes in The Essential Rumi. "And, some resonance of ocean resides in everyone." There are many who have felt that "salt breeze" with Barks having sold more than half a million books of Rumi translations. Continuing the metaphor, Barks said that we "metabolize" each other's truth when we pour our individual truth into the "general flow." Like the whirling dervish community where Rumi began, interacting with Barks is a constant moving and flowing experience. He's full of vitality and exhuberance. It's obvious he strives to "connect there with an open heart, and follow the oceanfrog if he starts for home." The path toward "anhilation" by love is much like a man's initiation or "turning point," he said. Rumi's life changed in his late 30s after he met his mentor Shamsi Tabriz. "Tabriz told the young mystic to put away his books and experience personally what he had been learning," Barks noted. "It's like walking back down into the mountain ... after the drunkenness comes the sobriety that embodies love and allows for a true human being ... one that still has anger and jealousy inside ... like guests in a house. You know Rumi's THE GUEST HOUSE?" THE GUEST HOUSE This being human is a guest house. A joy, a depression, a meanness, Welcome and entertain them all! The dark thought, the shame, the malice, Be grateful for whoever comes, According to Barks and Rumi, all emotions are present within love, including fear and longing. LONGING Longing is the core of mystery. Your desire must be disciplined, FEAR Everyone can see how they have polished the
mirror Not everyone wants to be king! Troubles come. One person pack up In battle, one runs fearing Unfortunately for the state of the world today, the true soulful fighting warrior has turned into gangs of "Monster Boys," Barks said. The lack of initiation for young men leaves them "standing around street corners wearing black coats, smoking and looking mean. They're trying to initiate themselves by grotesquely covering themselves with tattoos. The tattooing is a howl for initiation." Barks said he believed there are two initiations - one from Teenager to Warrior and the other from Citizen to Elder. The gifted writer/translator appears to have achieved the rightful title of Elder, having co-written a collection of poems with his granddaughter entitled "Club." In "Tentmaking," his own book of poetry, Barks writes about a young man in "Luke and the Duct Tape" that the author believes may have been lost without the hope of initiation into manhood. "He had that broom - the broom is a symbol of knowledge - but he and I didn't quite make contact, and he's gone suddenly. His life wasn't there. There is a lost connection between younger men and older men." During his time teaching English and poetry at the University of Georgia, Barks would often encourage his students to challenge themselves with writing exercises. He directed them to write about something shameful in their own life experience. "The writing gets more real and more vivid," he said. "It's more interesting, and you can feel the vitality from the words and sentences when one confronts things of shame. It takes courage to tell the truth. I used to have them tell about a time they stole something. Everybody's stole something!" Barks' ability to tap into the soul of Rumi is less like stealing and more like offering a blessed gift to those who read not with the mind but with the heart. This vibrant poet and educator has the unique talen of touching something divine and yet he still holds humbly to his own mortality. "It's just the human condition, and I'm glad we have some glory as well as the mud," Barks said. "The point is to tell the truth and not lie about the self degradation. We have to tell them both. I know they're both in me." Barks suggested that the following poem he wrote may be of interest to an audience of men: DIVINATION Our game is to lower a fluffing riffle of fingertip toeholds slowly up and down and
across nudges into notice: pathos! The ache that
suffers go blurry inside the smoor of where they
point. two loves, for language and for the body, (Editor's note, challenged by Barks: I discovered Rumi writing during my first divorce. I believe it saved my life, if not my soul.) These are a few of my favorites from Barks' recent book: I TRUST YOU The soul is a newly skinned hide, bloody You'll become lovely and very strong. The Friend, who knows a lot more than you
do, when you're beaten, when you hear Checkmate, HARSH EVIDENCE What sort of person says that he or she
wants Love is a lawsuit where harsh evidence You're heard that every buried treasure Don't run from those who scold, THE SILENT ARTICULATION OF A FACE Love comes with a knife, not some working his wild schemes, tearing off his
clothes, A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous
wasp. You've been walking the ocean's edge, You must dive naked under and deeper under, The ground submits to the sky and suffers Don't put blankets over the drum! Let the cords of your robe be untied. Let soul speak with the silent © 2005 Reid Baer The fame you earn has a different taste from the fame that is forced upon you. - Gloria Vanderbilt
Reid Baer, an
award-winning playwright for “A Lyon’s
Tale” is also a newspaper journalist, a poet
with more than 100 poems in magazines world wide,
and a novelist with his first book released this
month entitled Kill
The Story. Baer has been
a member of The ManKind Project since 1995 and
currently edits The New Warrior Journal for
The ManKind Project www.mkp.org
Menstuff® Directory Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon Clay ©1996-2023, Gordon Clay |
.
He resides in Reidsville, N.C. with his wife
Patricia. He can be reached at 
