WATER
POEMS BY RUMI, TRANSLATIONS BY HALEH LIZA GAFORI
New York Review Books - Classics / Penguin Random House
COMING APRIL 2025
"Haleh Liza Gafori's pitch-perfect translation of Rumi updates and amplifies his mindful, muscular soul. My sense of his poetry, shaped by prior translators, has been rebooted—or entirely, booted—by her prismatic lyricism. Music, wit, and empathy color her lens. What a sweeping, invigorating read."
- TERRANCE HAYES
“These stunning translations of Master Rumi, at once gustatory and spiritual, cut the gloom of our existential doings. Imperative now, as ever, to know this beauty and love.”
- ANNE WALDMAN
"Water is immediate and timeless. These poems imprint on the heart. To read these verses is to enter mystery and paradox, to be burnished by the sacred fire and broken open by the holiest dance.”
- SULEIKA JAOUAD
“Gorgeous, fluent, and faithful translations. Gafori renders Rumi’s voice on the page with an original integrity that is as skilled as it is unforgettable.”
- PADRAIG O’TUAMA
"Has there ever been a better moment to read or reread the timeless lyrical wisdom of Rumi? As translator Haleh Liza Gafori reminds us in these elegant new translations, Rumi offers both indelible ground to stand on, and energy to move forward with hope and grace."
- NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
“This Rumi speaks to us across time, to offer us a way back into our lives. Now tell me about the God inside. / For once, enter your own house. Each poem in this luminous new translation is meant for this moment. If your eyes are polluted, / let your tears wash them. / The cure is in your tears. Haleh Liza Gafori is offering us a gift, to light our way home.”
- NICK FLYNN
“Gafori’s elegant translations of Rumi’s poems in Water can change your life. Her fidelity to the original Persian, her understanding of the Sufi context in which these poems sprang to life, and her exquisite musical sensibility make Water essential reading.”
- CHRISTOPHER MERRILL
GOLD
POEMS BY RUMI, TRANSLATIONS BY HALEH LIZA GAFORI
New York Review Books - Classics / Penguin Random House
March, 2022
“This new translation preserves the radical intelligence and the ecstatic drama of poems that are as full of individual character as they are of visionary wisdom.”
- NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s energetic translation highlights the timelessness of Rumi’s work, delivering unforgettable phrases. Rumi’s introspective nature…cosmic vision…and deeply contemplatve yet accessible poems star in this worthy translation.” - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s Gold is everything Rumi was himself—sacred, profane, laugh out loud funny, deeply earnest, demotic, and yes, Persian. There’s a rich fluency here not just in idiom but in gesture, in spirit. What a gift this is, what gold.”- KAVEH AKBAR
“Haleh Liza Gatori’s ecstatic and piercing translation has lifted a veil, bringing Rumi closer into the quick of our present. Each poem is a divine invitation. Free your mind. Drown in love.” - V (formerly EVE ENSLER)
“A dazzling selection of his poetry, including some never previously alive in English, appears in Gold, newly translated and inspirited by poet and musician Haleh Liza Gafori…One of 16 favorite books of 2022, [Gold] will go on nourishing generations to come”
- MARIA POPOVA
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s new translations of Rumi are the work of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and, best of all, a marvelous poet in English.”
- MARILYN HACKER, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets ‘08-’14
“In this eloquent, faithful translation of the popular 13th-century poet and mystic Rumi, Persian American poet and musician Gafori opens a fresh window on Rumi’s spiritual quest and his urgent invitation to readers to embrace a more enlightened existence. Ecstatic, spinning lines wind through mystical paradoxes—wordless speaker, footless runner, placeless place—toward a sense of wonder and oceanic love.” - LIBRARY JOURNAL
