The anthology which you hold in your hands contains poems from many different religious traditions. Although many books have been written about the meaning of poetry, since the advent of modernism early in the last century, most students of literature are quite willing to believe that a poem can take on just about any form imaginable. From surrealism to objectivism, we have seen many literary movements come and go. In all of them experimentation is admired, and originality is prized. Words are reveled in for their own sake, and every subject becomes fair game for the poet’s arrow.
Even translators of the poetry written by great saints and sages of the past, such as Rumi and Mirabai, seek to recast the intense rhymes and regular meters of the originals into a language which is more in conformity with contemporary blank verse, and some of these translators have gone so far as to suggest that the most appropriate medium for spiritual poetry is found in the informal and colloquial tones of modern American English. We thank the translators for making a good deal of these spiritual writings available to a wider reading public.
Download
