Coleman Barks has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 9 ratings. The most-rated is Pure Water.
Pure Water
Summary
A 2009 Nautilus Gold Award Winner, Pure Water is Coleman Barks’ inspired live performance of the poetry of Jellaludin Rumi (1207-1273) - with Sufi stories and jokes, accompanied with music by Bach, O’Carolan, Friesen and others. The performance captured in this recording recalls the essence of the communal celebrations of poetry, stories, jokes, prayer, and music in which Rumi’s work was first uttered, but presents it in a distinctive contemporary setting. Coleman’s words combine with the cello of Grammy Award-winner Eugene Friesen, carrying the language directly into the heart of the listener with a diverse menu of world folk melodies, Bach, and improvisation. As Rumi wrote: "What is the soul? Consciousness. The more awareness, the deeper the soul, and when such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around. It’s so simple to tell one who puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real thing. We know the taste of pure water...."
©2011 Coleman Barks (P)2011 BetterListen! LLC
I Want Burning
Summary
Ecstatic Sufi Poetry Comes Alive To fully experience the ecstatic poetry of the Middle and Near East, you must hear it as originally intended: stirred ablaze by inspired music and rhythms before a live audience. In I Want Burning, Coleman Barks fuses his passionate scholarship with a deep feeling for the poetry of Rumi, Hafiz (a 14th-century Sufi mystic, called "one of the jewels in the necklace of Persian poetry"), and Lalla (an exquisite Kashmiri female poet of the 14th century). Includes more than 50 translations of this rare and moving work, accompanied by vocals, Peruvian flute, harmonium, and other instruments.
©2001 Coleman Barks (P)2001 Coleman Barks
The Ecstatic Soul
Summary
How does a body of poetry written in a remote part of the world find its way to best seller lists published in leading newspapers in the U.S. over 700 years later? What is the compelling quality inherent in great literature that resonates throughout the ages? Coleman Barks, poet and translator of Jelalludin Rumi's poetry, explores the genius, mystery and rapture of Rumi's work; why he has become the most-read poet in America, and what his poetry has in common with the immortal writings of Dickinson, Emerson and Thoreau. "His poetry reflects the transcendent longing that we all feel," says Barks. "Rumi speaks to the times. He sees the divine in grace and kindness, and also in the terrible things, revealing to us the ecstasy that resides at the deepest core of all experience, and the way out of sorrow." Coleman Barks taught poetry at the University of Georgia for many years, and is translator of The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems (HarperSanFrancisco 2001); The Illuminated Prayer: The Five-Times Prayer of the Sufis (Ballantine Wellspring 2000); co-translator of The Essential Rumi (HarperSanFrancisco 1997) and co-translator (with John Moyne) of two volumes of Rumi poems, Unseen Rain (Threshold Books 1986) and Open Secret (Threshold Books 1984). Topics explored in this dialogue include: how the story of Rumi and his poetry can have a powerful influence on your life, the stunning story of sculptor Michael Richards and his 9/11 prophetic work of art, how the soul makes art that can tell us of things to come, how you can balance the paradox of ecstatic grief, how Rumi's relationship with his teacher, Shams of Tabriz, inspired his poetry.
©2001 New Dimensions Foundation (P)2008 New Dimensions Foundation
Rumi
Summary
In the seven centuries since the death of Jelaluddin Rumi, in 1273, the world has come to know and thrill to his sacred poetry. In concert with the tabla and sitar, his writing is part of a religious tradition that is believed to excite "spiritual heroism", embracing the holiness of love, lamentation, battle, and the longing for God. Rumi: Voice of Longing collects nearly 100 of Rumi's most memorable quatrains, presented here for the first time in a superb recording. Includes musical accompaniment by Marcus Wise on tablas and David Whetstone on sitar, and a special appearance by renowned poet Robert Bly. Translated and performed by the Rumi scholar Coleman Barks, these works echo with a spiritual complexity that defies their outward simplicity. As Sufism acknowledges the truth of other religions, so does Rumi's poetry reflect universal themes: the search for the highest truth, the mystery of surrender, the longing to overcome ego imprisonment. Rumi: Voice of Longing captures the silence, the love, and the playfulness that make each experience with this work one of sacred wonder.
©2002 Coleman Barks (P)2002 Coleman Barks
Just Being Here
Summary
"What I had thought of before as God, I met today in a human being." Those were the words of the Persian mystic poet Rumi upon meeting the wild dervish Shams Tabriz. And out of their friendship bloomed many of Jelaluddin Rumi's most inspired verses. In Just Being Here, the acclaimed poet Coleman Barks joins master cellist David Darling in a celebration of friendship - some of Rumi's most memorable poems on the subject and five of Coleman's own - illuminated within the interplay of Coleman's inspired readings and David's music. Listen in and let them widen and deepen your senses, like a fresh breeze that invites you to breathe freely and surrender to love in all of its changing guises.
©2011 Coleman Barks and David Darling (P)2011 Coleman Barks and David Darling
Poems of Rumi
Summary
Jalaluddin Rumi is unquestionably one of the greatest spiritual poets of the world. This audio features Robert Bly and Coleman Barks each reading his own versons of Rumi. Brilliant musical accompaniment provides playfulness and ground to great spiritual expression.
©1989 Robert Bly and Coleman Barks (P)2016 Audio Literature, Phoenix Books