A follow-up to her ground-breaking translations of Rumi in Gold poet and musician Haleh Liza
Gafori translates a new selection of work by the great Persian mystic that will muster the soul
and stir the spirit. “Gafori’s selection boasts idiosyncratic connections and ear-catching
tempo changes from sequences and litanies to unimprovably terse epigrams: ‘Beloved when your
sweetness rains down the price of rock candy plummets.’” —Christopher Spaide LitHub
"Gafori’s translation is exceptional: contemporary razor-sharp and lyrically expansive but
still unmistakably Rumi . . . an accessible enjoyable and essential entry point to Rumi’s
work." —Publishers Weekly starred review Water expands on Gold Haleh Liza Gafori's
inspired and widely praised translation of the lyric poetry of the Persian mystic Rumi. As in
Gold Gafori renders with fluid grace and moving immediacy these indisputable masterworks of
world literature drawing on the deep well of Rumi’s work to bring out the worldly wit and
wisdom that accompany his otherworldly summons. Behold the divine within and without he tells
us. Question the gnawing hunger for material possessions fame and fortune and the fear of
emptiness that drives it. Muster the soul and experience a more compassionate and liberated
state of mind. An eco-poet before his time Rumi celebrates the immensity and wonder of the
natural world while warning us of the havoc that greed and the pursuit of power wreak upon us
and our world. His flights of dazzling imagery open up heart-stopping glimpses of the divine
challenging readers to wake from oblivion and above all to surrender to the transformative
power of Love. Gafori is an acclaimed vocalist and musician as well as a gifted linguist and
poet and in her translations Rumi's poetry sings and beckons as nowhere else. Hers is the work
as the poet Marilyn Hacker has said "of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of
the original Farsi text a dedicated miner of context and backstory and best of all a
marvelous poet in English.”
