Description: The poems inHummingbird Sleep move associatively between Coleman Barks's personal experience and his extensive reading, weaving together a wild and eclectic range of material. A discussion of Plotinus, Barks's appearance on PBS NewsHour, a note Keats once left on Wordsworth's mantelpiece, a splinter in the heel, and a quote from the Upanishads-all make their way into Barks's most recent poems, which achieve intimacy and expansiveness at the same time.
Brief description: COLEMAN BARKS (1937-2026) was the best-selling translator of The Essential Rumi The Soul of Rumi, and Rumi: The Book of Love and author of numerous volumes of poetry including Hummingbird Sleep: Poems, 2009-2011 and Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2008 (both Georgia). He taught creative writing and American poetry in the English Department at the University of Georgia for thirty years and lived in Athens, Georgia.
Review Quotes:
In this collection, [Barks] juxtaposes the ideas of the mystics Gregory of Nyssa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, and other noted philosopher-poets against such everyday images as basketball, fishing, and sitting by a creek. The result is a quiet, sometimes humorous examination of the meanings of identity, language, and perception.
--UGA Research