Rumi: Selected Poems

This book is a collection of poetry by the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic Jalal ad-din Rumi, or simply Rumi as he is more commonly known.

   I went into this book expecting majestic, mysterious uniqueness; and I found it. Rumi, it is claimed at least by the blurb inside the Penguin Classics edition,* is the most-read poet in the contemporary United States of America - which I honestly found quite a shock given the friendly terms Iran is currently on with that country. I guess people who read poetry are generally more forgivingly open-minded? Anyway - the Penguin Classics edition, which I read, edits the whole of Rumi's multi-volume masterwork the mathnawi into twenty-seven thematic chapters, with themes ranging from Bewilderment, Emptiness and Silence and Being a Lover to Art as Flirtation with Surrender, Recognizing Elegance and Jesus. As a Sufi, Rumi believed that union with God in His divine loving nature was achievable to the willing and dedicated soul, and that belief shines through on every page of his poetry - there is an affirmingness there, a love of all that is human and authentic, almost to a fault. Many of these poems are tongue-in-cheek; lots are genuinely funny; many deal with profane matters; several are genuinely pornographic (there is one very graphically memorable one involving a donkey and a makeshift sheath); many more deal in explicitly religious terms with the struggles of human life and consciousness, of love and hope and loss and fear, of union and separation, of discovering and keeping one's place in the world or even simply of wondering where that may be. All are beautiful and worth reading.

   I don't know enough about Sufism to confidently discuss my reflections on this collection of poetry in religious or spiritual terms, but as poetry, as pure voice that uplifts and echoes the human spirit, I can confidently say that this incredible man is worth reading.

* Translated and edited by Coleman Barks, and also, for some reason, including an appendix with half a dozen random recipes.

the Flight of the Eisenstein

This book by James Swallow is the fourth Horus Heresy novel. Rather than following straight on from the third book, this one skips backwards a few years to trace the journey of Mortarion's Death Guard legion, viewed through the personage of captain Nathaniel Garro. We follow this legion through a handful of military struggles and victories, before catching up with the broader narrative at Isstvan III - where, while everything is kicking off down on the planet's surface, Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's Children manages to send a warning to Garro (who is waiting in space) that a betrayal of epic proportions is about to take place. Shortly thereafter a small gaggle of civilian refugees from Horus's own ship (where all the remembrancers who had been assigned to them had been slaughtered once the heretical new direction of the Luna Wolves - now renamed the Sons of Horus - had been decided upon) manage to reach Garro on the Eisenstein, and inform him of the developments that are taking place. Determined to inform the Emperor of the treacheries taking place, Garro commands the Eisenstein to flee into the warp and make headway as fast as possible for Terra (i.e. Earth). They have a close shave breaking away from the rest of the fleet orbiting Isstvan III, but they eventually make it - and at the novel's closing Garro has succeeded in passing his news on to Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Imperial Fists legion who are stationed at Terra, who is quite understandably shocked and outraged at the report.

Galaxy in Flames

This book by Ben Counter is the third of the Horus Heresy series. Loken and the other Luna Wolves, in large part unaware of the heretical direction taken by their Primarch and much of the legion, team up with Fulgrim's legion the Emperor's Children, Angron's legion the World Eaters, and Mortarion's legion the Death Guard to put down a reported rebellion on the world Isstvan III. Little can the loyalists of these Astartes legions know that this whole little trip is a dark ploy to ensure the ultimate compliance of these four legions to their Primarchs' new loyalties - that is, to the Warmaster above to the Emperor... the stage is set for tragedy and slaughter as civil war amongst the Imperium's finest breaks out in earnest.

False Gods

This book by Graham McNeill is the second in the Horus Heresy series. We're back with Loken and the Luna Wolves, and they're still absolutely bossing their way through the latter days of the Great Crusade - that is, until a mysterious weapon wielded by a possessed-seeming renegade manages to seriously wound Horus himself. On the brink of expiration, the Warmaster's closest confidants decide to take Erebus up on his offer of a means of salvation, even if that means striking a binding bargain with the unknown, unknowably powerful forces of the warp - and with that, the sown seeds of heresy are covered with dirt and given their first big watering...