Visiting UNCW writer finds reason behind the rhymes of Rumi
A poet is not without honor, except in her own country.
Louise Gluck may have won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, but the best-selling poet in America isn't her, but rather an Iranian guy who's been dead for nearly 750 years.
The verses of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmi, better known as just Rumi, sell millions of copies each year in English translation. Untold numbers of couples work his poems into their wedding ceremonies -- although, when he speaks of his Beloved, he probably means the Divine rather than a human sweetheart.
Madonna is a big fan. Chris Martin of Coldplay turned to Rumi to recover from his divorce from Gwyneth Paltrow, and snatches of his work found their way into the band's lyrics. Beyonce and Jay-Z even named their daughter "Rumi."
The man is a star.
But is it all a fad? Will Rumi eventually go the way of the Desiderata ("Go placidly among the noise and waste"), Rod McKuen and "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"?
Melody Moezzi argues not.
Moezzi,currently a visiting associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is the daughter of Iranians who fled the current regime in Iran. Born in the USA, and currently living in the Raleigh-Durham area, she nevertheless speaks Farsi, the modern equivalent of the main language in which Rumi wrote. (She admits, however, that she's not perfect at it.)
In her latest, engaging book, "The Rumi Prescription," Moezzi -- who's also a licensed, non-practicing lawyer -- tells how a study of Rumi's verse helped her through several dark nights of the soul. Further, she argues that Rumi can help modern Americans through much of their current malaise.
Some years back, Moezzi had hit a dry patch, a monumental case of writer's block. After a terrific struggle with bipolar disorder, her mood swings were controlled by medications. What she was left with, though, was an emptiness, a sense of the blahs.
To fix it, Moezzi took a month's vacation and headed to San Diego to visit her parents. Specifically, she sought out her father, a confirmed Rumi fan, for daily tutoring sessions, reading Rumi in the original medieval Persian.
Her dad, an obstetrician, apparently drops Rumi couplets at the drop of a fez, the way the late Sen. Sam J. Ervin used to pepper his speeches with snatches of Shakespeare or the King Jame Bible. When Moezzi was little, the habit often irritated her, like having one's parents constantly remind you to eat your vegetables and wash behind your ears. Now, however, she sensed there was something she missed.
Catching back up wasn't easy. Rumi lived a full century before Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Perisan of his poems is sometimes as far from Farsi, the contemporary language of Iran, as "The Canterbury Tales" are from modern English.
Also, the meanings are slippery. Rumi was a Muslim, a scholar of the Quran, but his Islam was far from that of the Ayatollah Khomeini or the Taliban. Technically, he was a Sufi, one of a mystic school who sought union with the Divine through such practices as ecstatic dancing. (Rumi was one of the original "whirling dervishes.") As with all mystics, his meaning is not always clear.
Still, Moezzi found some basic lessons. The essence of the Divine -- God, Allah, or whatever you call it -- is love, and joining in love. The Divine is in all of us, and to get to it, we must overcome our egos, our self-absorption, and reach out. We have to tune out the distractions of everyday life and learn what's really important.
If this sounds familiar, it is. As Moezzi notes, Rumi's mysticism finds parallels all over, in Buddhism, in Christianity from the First Epistle of John to St. Francis of Assisi, and in Western thinkers all the way to John Lennon. The lessons aren't new. We just have to master them.
Among those lessons is embracing your loved ones. One of the most attractive parts of "The Rumi Prescription" is how Moezzi grows closer to her father, a cheerful character with an immigrant's cockeyed optimism.
Rumi can't solve everything. Moezzi makes clear that she still takes her pills. Still, she makes a case that he has a lot to offer us, in a memoir punctuated with humor, pathos and often pithy writing. Readers might be reminded of Jeff Bridges' "The Dude and the Zen Master," or "Families and How to Survive Them" by Robin Skynner and John Cleese.
Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmail.com.
BOOK REVIEW
"THE RUMI PRESCRIPTION: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life"
By Melody Moezzi
Tarcher Perigee, $27