Description
While long revered around the world as a great mystical poet of Islam, the 13th century Persain poet Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī has fairly recently also been known to be the best selling poet in America. This recent American awareness and popularity is in large part the result of versions, translations and interpretations by poets Robert Bly and Coleman Barks. Each week we’ll read five chapters of the collection of poems from The Essential Rumi translations by Coleman Barks. Students will pick the poems they would like to read out loud and explore with all of us. We will aim to understand the poems and do exercises that help us experience Rumi’s ecstatic joy that permeates our nights and days.
Michael Koran trained people in “Non-Violent Communication” at Newton Community Education, at Tufts University Osher Institute, and in his home. He has explored with his students “Religions For The World” for over 10 years at The Cambridge Center for Adult Education. He has taught over 100 different classes at adult education centers including: “Love and Friendship,” “Story Telling,” “Guidelines to Extraordinary Writing,” “Poems Inspiring Poetic Lives,” “Blessings From Abraham To All, “The Koran,” “Psychic Skills For A Psychic Life,” “Great Scenes From World Theatre” and “Defeating Self-Defeating Behavior.” He has self-published Verse to Better: A Poem for Each Day of Our Year and has performed as a stand-up comic: “Relationships are Hard—Especially with Other People.”
At Boston University for ten years, Michael taught imprisoned men and women in a B.A. program. He taught “Introduction to Philosophy” for 20 years at The University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He has written and performed one-person plays: Prose and Cons: Liberating Stories From Prison, and Inaudible Laughter Forever. He has hosted an award-winning television show: “Getting Out of Prison.” For over 25 years at Cambridge Community Television, he has invited viewers to discover with him, on his show called AHAH, ways to be “A Human Among Humans.”
