translated by Coleman Barks Jelaluddin Rumi was a sufi mystic who lived in Persia and Anatolia in the thirteenth century. I’ve read not only that his works have been hugely influential on Middle Eastern literature, but also that translations of these poems remain extremely popular in the West––as I feel they should be after experiencing…
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by Robert A. Heinlein Oh, Heinlein. I had my doubts about this one after my last foray into his work, but mention of Stranger in a Strange Land being on the bookshelf of an author I respect within another book I loved made me think that it might be worth a look. (Besides, the copy…
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Rubáiyát are tetrastichs, independent stanzas, each composed of four lines of near equal length. In their traditional form, all except the third line rhymes, though, occasionally, all lines of the verse rhyme. Omar Khayyám’s rubáiyát are probably the most famous poems written in the form, though they were obscure in the Western world until Edward…
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by Khalil Gibran The Prophet is Gibran’s famous collection of poetic essays. Framed as a prophet preparing to leave a place he’s lived for over a decade, he imparts his final words of wisdom to the people he loves, those who have come to love him back, who listen in rapt attention. And these words…
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by Carolina Maria de Jesus Child of the Dark is the diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, who lived in a favela, a slum, of São Paulo in the late ’50s. (Well, longer than that in truth, but this is at least the period recounted within these pages.) With only a second-grade education, she sold…
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by Gary Barwin Yiddish for Pirates follows Moishe’s journey from being a young boy on the shtetl to captain of a pirate ship in the late fifteenth century. Narrated by Aaron, the African grey parrot who chose Moishe’s shoulder as his perch, the story tells of Moishe’s attempts to help Yids flee persecution during the…
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by Homer The Odyssey continues the story immediately after the sacking of Troy by the Greeks, so you can imagine it’s at least a bit exciting, picking this up so soon after finishing The Iliad. The hero, Odysseus, attempts to return to Ithaca, to his patient wife and son whom he left as an infant….
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by Homer What a time to be alive, the era of glory and warfare recounted within The Iliad. Life gave no room for softness was we know it today: You were forced to cruelty, or else be left to the whims of those without mercy. A more modern discussion of peace and harmony among men…
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by Denise Chong An unforgettable photo of a child––running naked, crying, and badly burned by a napalm strike––was not only influential in turning public opinion during the Vietnam war, but kept an enduring legacy as the embodiment of the senselessness and cruelty of war. Kim Phuc was the child, and The Girl in the Picture…
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by Robert Taylor The Devil’s Pulpit is a collection of sermons delivered by reverend Robert Taylor outlining the parallels between the Bible and the Zodiac, with the suggestion that Christianity is only thinly-disguised paganism, and that worshipping God and Jesus is effectively worshipping the sun. Written and read in the mid-19th century, it was because…
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