Negative Positive
Title: Very disappointing
Review: This book obscures the bold spirit of Rumi with a facade of emotionally dominated wishful thinking. Rumi should challenge, confront, transport and dare the reader - but this book merely panders. The text is liberally sprinkled with irrelevancies and contains several interpolations, mistranslations and historical inaccuracies, indeed, blatant balderdash in a couple of places. The poetry is generally well rendered but is a pre-digested selection of the "soft bits" - the bones have been filleted out. One also gets the vague impression that the English language has been "dumbed down". The illustrations are well executed, except for the snapshot at the end, which is both irrelevant and uninteresting. This piece of self-indulgent drivel spoils an otherwise good collection of artwork. In summary, the reader will end up knowing more about Coleman Barks than about Rumi.
Is the review positive or negative? 