The biggest selling poet in America

Jalaluddin Rumi was born eight centuries ago in what we now call Afghanistan. One of the more amazing things related to him (and there are plenty) is the fact that he has been the best selling poet in the USA for several years.

For most Americans poetry is something you have to withstand in high school, most never really understand, let alone learn to love verse. It would seem that with the exception of teenage girl’s journals that poetry is not held in any real esteem (by the culture at large).

I suppose you could make an argument about popular music, and even hip hop music in that Rap is a form of street poetry… And to be honest, this may be true, only in the sense that Homer’s epics were originally intended to be listened to. Most of these modern variants of poetry live in the air, but rarely on the printed page. And as such, I think that my point still stands about the dearth of poetry in our culture.

So, with this dearth of poetry taken as a given, then why is Rumi so popular? Maybe it is because being ‘popular’ as a poet (i.e. selling books) is not that high a bar to traverse; it’s not that Rumi is selling millions of books…

Another point might be that Rumi is not really seen as a poet but as a support for many forms of ‘new age’ mysticism…the Kabala, and other modern forms of faux esoteric. Rumi was a Sufi in central Asia who was enamored with the idea of God, and his writings (they are arguably poetry) relate to Zen Koans in that they are often presented as little puzzles.

Best-Selling Poet in America
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/general-faith/best-selling-poet-in-america-t11595.html

No matter how fast you run
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes it’s in front.
Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

Rumi Rules!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,356133,00.html

As a result, how much of this actually related to Rumi, the Sufi Mystic, versus our modern self-help, self actualization culture…?