ThoughtGallery.org > Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz | Rumi: Unseen Poems

Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz | Rumi: Unseen Poems

Rumi: Unseen Poems (Everyman’s Library, 2019)

Join the store to celebrate the release of a collection of never-before-translated poems by the widely beloved medieval Persian poet Rumi.

Rumi (1207-1273) was trained in Sufism–a mystic tradition within Islam–and founded the Sufi order known to us as the Whirling Dervishes, who use dance and music as part of their spiritual devotion. Rumi’s poetry has long been popular with contemporary Western audiences because of the way it combines the sacred and the sensual, describing divine love in rapturously human terms.

However, a number of Rumi’s English translators over the past century were not speakers of Persian and they based their sometimes very free interpretations on earlier translations. With Western audiences in mind, translators also tended to tone down or leave out elements of Persian culture and of Islam in Rumi’s work, and hundreds of the prolific poet’s works were never made available to English speakers at all. In this new translation — composed almost entirely of untranslated gems from Rumi’s vast ouevre — Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz aim to achieve greater fidelity to the originals while still allowing Rumi’s lyric exuberance to shine.

Brad and Maryam will read from the collection in both the original Persian and in their new English translations, and then take questions from the audience.

Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, and biographer, whose most recent book is Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love (Harper, 2017). His previous ten books include: Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller. His work has been featured in numerous magazines including: The New Republic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Travel and Leisure, Partisan Review,The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Art Forum, Harper’s Bazaar, The Nation, and The Daily Beast. A Guggenheim fellow in Biography, he has also received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. A professor of English at William Paterson University, he earned his PhD at Columbia University, and lives in New York City.

Maryam Mortaz is an Iranian-American writer and translator. She is the author of the short story collection Pushkin and other short stories, and her work has also been published in such journals as Bomb, Poetry magazine, New Review of Literature and Callaloo. She works and lives in New York City.











When: Tue., Sep. 10, 2019 at 7:00 pm
Where: 192 Books
192 Tenth Ave.
212-255-4022
Price: Free
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Rumi: Unseen Poems (Everyman’s Library, 2019)

Join the store to celebrate the release of a collection of never-before-translated poems by the widely beloved medieval Persian poet Rumi.

Rumi (1207-1273) was trained in Sufism–a mystic tradition within Islam–and founded the Sufi order known to us as the Whirling Dervishes, who use dance and music as part of their spiritual devotion. Rumi’s poetry has long been popular with contemporary Western audiences because of the way it combines the sacred and the sensual, describing divine love in rapturously human terms.

However, a number of Rumi’s English translators over the past century were not speakers of Persian and they based their sometimes very free interpretations on earlier translations. With Western audiences in mind, translators also tended to tone down or leave out elements of Persian culture and of Islam in Rumi’s work, and hundreds of the prolific poet’s works were never made available to English speakers at all. In this new translation — composed almost entirely of untranslated gems from Rumi’s vast ouevre — Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz aim to achieve greater fidelity to the originals while still allowing Rumi’s lyric exuberance to shine.

Brad and Maryam will read from the collection in both the original Persian and in their new English translations, and then take questions from the audience.

Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, and biographer, whose most recent book is Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love (Harper, 2017). His previous ten books include: Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller. His work has been featured in numerous magazines including: The New Republic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Travel and Leisure, Partisan Review,The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Art Forum, Harper’s Bazaar, The Nation, and The Daily Beast. A Guggenheim fellow in Biography, he has also received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. A professor of English at William Paterson University, he earned his PhD at Columbia University, and lives in New York City.

Maryam Mortaz is an Iranian-American writer and translator. She is the author of the short story collection Pushkin and other short stories, and her work has also been published in such journals as Bomb, Poetry magazine, New Review of Literature and Callaloo. She works and lives in New York City.

Buy tickets/get more info now