Rumi's Secret

October 3, 2016
In sometimes poetic, though sometimes prosaic and workmanlike, prose, Gooch (Smash Cut) provides an in-depth biography of Rumi, the great Sufi poet. He begins the book as he is retracing Rumi’s footsteps in Aleppo in 2011, just before the outbreak of civil war, and is told by a resident that, “like your American poet Whitman,” Rumi was a great poet because he never revealed his secret. Drawing deeply on Rumi’s own writing, Gooch clearly recreates the life and times of this 13th-century mystic. Born on September 30, 1207, in present-day Tajikistan, Rumi soon showed his life would not be an ordinary one: when he was just five years old he reported seeing angels. His family set out on the road when he was still young, and Rumi met a pivotal influence, the poet Attar. As he grew in poetic stature, Rumi encountered the mystic Shams of Tabriz, who became a venerated teacher and taught Rumi the religion of the heart that became his own hallmark. In a close reading of Rumi’s poetry, Gooch quotes two lines to reveal the titular secret: “explanations make many things clear/but only love is clear in silence.” Gooch’s biography can be plodding, but the story it tells is fascinating enough to compel readers to pick up Rumi’s poetry and discover his secret for themselves. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency.

October 15, 2016
An appreciative biography of the 13th-century Persian poet, teacher, and mystic.In researching the life of Rumi (1207-1273), Gooch (English/William Paterson Univ.; Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard and Art and the '70s and the '80s, 2015, etc.) traced the poet's steps through the Middle East, immersed himself in scholarship, and, impressively, spent years learning Persian in order to translate Rumi's works and contemporary accounts of a poet who came to achieve enormous international popularity for his "emphasis on ecstasy and love over religions and creeds." Born into privilege, the son of a religious teacher, Rumi was an eager student of history, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, Arabic grammar, commentaries on the Quran, and religious law; he attended the most respected colleges, preparing to become "a religious jurist and guider of souls." As Genghis Khan, and later his grandson, rampaged through the Middle East, Rumi was determined to rise above the "churning realpolitik of the Mongols," confident that a higher power shaped historical events. His career as a scholar and teacher altered radically when he met Shams of Tabriz, "a singular outlier mystic in a history crowded with extreme religious seekers." Shams was rude and uncompromising, opposite in personality from the gentle Rumi, but the two formed an intense bond, which Gooch sees as the essential secret of Rumi's life and work. They withdrew together for many months, inciting jealousy among Rumi's family. Shams goaded Rumi into sloughing off erudition and looking into his heart, introducing him to music, dance, extreme fasting, and ecstatic whirling. Gooch is generous in portraying 60-year-old Shams' marriage to Rumi's teenage stepdaughter as inspired by "late-life blossoming of desire," despite evidence of the man's oppressive treatment of his young wife, which ended in her suspicious death. After two and a half years, Shams disappeared, possibly murdered, and Rumi despaired. But his influence lasted for the rest of the poet's life, emerging in an outpouring of verse, which Gooch explores with passion and insight. A vivid depiction of the powerful religious forces that Rumi transcended to reveal "the sound of one soul speaking."

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December 1, 2016

Often called the greatest mystical poet of any age, 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi master Rumi has been appreciated for centuries beyond the confines of his birthplace. Gooch (English, William Paterson Univ.; Flannery) retraces the life and times of Rumi by highlighting important benchmark events in his life and by revisiting locations in central and western Asia where he traveled and lived. Rumi's story is full of mystery and meaning, or as Gooch puts it, full of secrets--personal, poetic, and theological: "Like Whitman, or like Shakespeare, he never tells his secret." Drawing loosely on past works on Rumi, this passionate and compelling biography provides a richness of context through which one can understand the life of the Sufi mystic from new and colorful angles. For many of his facts, the author relies on Franklin D. Lewis's Rumi: Past and Present, East and West. Gooch immersed himself in studying Rumi, taking intensive Persian courses, traveling 2,500 miles retracing the map of the poet's life, and began translating him in collaboration with an Iranian American writer. VERDICT Recommended for all libraries as well as anyone with more than a passing interest in Rumi and Sufi poetry.--Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2016
The best-selling poet in America is probably the medieval Persian Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi (120773), known by the place-specifier Rumi, meaning from Rome (the Byzantine Empire). At age five, he saw angels and once momentarily vanished from among his playmates, saving him from harm. His father trained him to succeed him as a preacher and jurist in Islam's mystical Sufi tradition. Attracted to literature, he began as a youth to write the traditional stanzas of Persian poetry and concluded with the Masnavi, six volumes of stories deeply informed by the Qur'an. He had four great spiritual teacher-companions, the last two of which he chose to lead the school he inherited from his father. The othershis father and a wandering Sufi sheikh named Shamsshaped his thought and religious practice. Shams, who both came to and left Rumi unannounced, catalyzed the ecstatic, total love Rumi envisioned in the thousands of short lyrics that eventually made Rumi famous in America. Though unable to make Rumi's life spellbinding reading, Gooch well illuminates the poet's world and his distinctive adaptation to it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)