Coleman Barks, a poet who was known internationally for introducing the poetry of Rumi to a modern audience, died February 23. He was 88. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Barks's own poetry has been celebrated as well, winning the Southern Literary Review's Guy Owen Prize and the New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly prize for narrative poetry.
He published 11 books of his poetry and 22 of Rumi's, and was selected for the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Bark's own poetry books include Hummingbird Sleep (2013), Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems (2008), Gourd Seed (1993), and The Juice (1971).
Barks grew up in Chattanooga, Tenn., where his father, Herbert Bernard Barks, was headmaster of the Baylor School. His sister, author Elizabeth "Betsy" Barks Cox, said that because she and her brothers were raised in a school, they were always talking to English and Latin teachers "who wanted to know what we were reading. We were around books a lot."
Cox added that a big influence on them was the campus where they grew up: "It was a magical place, and it opened us to the soul. It opened Coleman. He knew about the sacred but never had anything to do with church. Just that sacred place Rumi talks about."
Barks attended UNC-Chapel Hill and earned his master's at Berkeley before returning to Chapel Hill for his doctorate. In 1967, he joined the English department faculty at the University of Georgia, where he taught literature and creative writing for more than 30 years.
Early in his teaching career, Barks published three books of poetry. Retired UGA English professor Hugh Ruppersburg, who selected some of his poetry for the collection Georgia Voices, described Barks' poetry "as relaxed and casual, but meditative, usually focused on nature or his family. There was a playfulness and curiosity in Coleman that came across in his personality and his poetry."
Barks was introduced to Rumi's work--an academic translation by A.J. Arberry of the original Persian--by his friend, poet Robert Bly, who told Barks the poems needed to be "released from their cages." Together, they reinterpreted the English translations into free verse, and published Night & Sleep in 1981.
Rumi's poetry resonated with Barks, "so much so that he began reading translation after translation and then became a student of Sri Lankan Sufi mystic Bawa Muhaiyaddeen," the Journal-Constitution wrote. "Further reinterpretation of Rumi's poems meant the publication of dozens of books. People who had never before bought a book of poetry found meaning in the spiritual verses of Rumi."
His Rumi translations include The Illuminated Rumi (1997) and The Essential Rumi (1995), often in collaboration with Persian scholar John Moyne. Barks's translation work was the focus of an episode of Bill Moyers's PBS series The Language of Life.
Bryan Barks, who had a close relationship with her grandfather, said, "Rumi was a constant, but I loved his own poetry so much. His own poetry means the most to me because I can feel him distinctly in his own work. It speaks to his spirit. He was playful."