News at Eleven: It is here that my praise for [Coleman] Barks

flows in exactly the opposite direction of the criticism he has attracted. Although Barks may have had to escort Rumi through Ellis Island to import him to the United States, he has shown that one can Americanize an "other" without bastardizing him. The task of a translator working across vast expanses of time and space is not easy, and what Barks has done is beautifully--indeed, wondrously--rendered Rumi into an English that pierces through the souls of millions of Westerners, yet still remains reverently (if only relatively) faithful to the original Persian.

Poetically, this is significant. But politically, it is momentous.

from Religious Dispatches: Found in Translation: How a Thirteenth-Century Islamic Poet Conquered America

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