Say I Am You: Poetry Interspersed with Stories of Rumi and Shams

This book is an excellent introduction to stories and poetry of Rumi, Shams (and even Rumi's son). The translations are secondary translations i.e. reworkings into free verse older more scholarly and literal translations. As such they make the works more readily accessable to the non-scholar. The stories provide a pleasant mix of relatively rare tales (stories that are quite specifically Sufi) and stories that appear in a variety of guises in different cultures and religions. The poems run from short lyrical pieces to stories in verse form - a nice cross section of Rumi's work. I have read several of Coleman Barks' translations - all enjoyable - and would recommend this book as a nice starting point.