Review

"What is the soul? Consciousness. The more awerness, the deeper the soul, and when such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around. It's so simple to tell one who puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real thing. We know the taste of pure water..." Jelaluddin Rumi, 1207-1273 --Essential Rumi

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Pleasure, October 5, 2007 By Cassandra Cleghorn (Williamstown, Massachusetts)

There is a shameful secret held close by many poets and musicians: as much as each of us loves the other's art, we also, deep down, suspect the other's instrument. Poets love music and the musicality of words, but ultimately we choose words; musicians love poetry and the poetical meanings of music, but ultimately we choose music. I exaggerate the opposition, of course. But as a poet and musician steeped in Western paradigms, I speak from either side of my mouth.

Pure Water, the glorious new CD of poems by Rumi as performed by translator/poet Coleman Barks and cellist Eugene Friesen, in its very purity and unity frees us from such false dichotomies. This album is the perfect realization of the innate kinship between poetry and music, a kinship recognized by the 13th-century Sufi poet and expressed in his culture's intertwining of art forms. "For over 1,000 years," Barks says at the beginning of the CD (exquisitely recorded from a live performance), "the Sufis have been experimenting with a form of deep listening that brings together poetry, spoken word, music and movement." This CD puts me, again and again, into the place of deep listening, and a very fine place it is. If, as Rumi and Barks say, "Poems/are rough notations for the music we are," this CD gives us the profound gift of ourselves, realized through our listening to others.

Barks' translations have long been recognized as among the most vital representations in English of Rumi's extraordinary mix of grief, faith, passion, sensuality and rigorous thought. His reading of these translations in a voice that is resonant and measured yet always easy, does justice to the work, conveying at once the seriousness of purpose around the whole enterprise of ecstatic poetry--that of "opening the heart"--and the free-wheeling irreverence of both poet and translator. I swear I can hear Rumi's laughter and tears seeping around the Southern edges of Barks's decidedly American accent. Barks includes a few of his own poems (in homage to his granddaughter and in memory of the poet William Mathews) in the middle of the concert, timed as a sort of interval between Persian ruminations. The overall rhythm of the program as it moves from poem to poem is exactly right.

Now for Friesen's music: To anyone who is familiar with Friesen's discography (especially his solo CDs In the Shade of Angels and Sono Miho, and his decades-long association with the Paul Winter Consort), Friesen's natural affinity for poetry makes perfect sense. Friesen's improvisations draw from the classical cello repertoire, jazz and vernacular music including Celtic, Brazilian, Indian and the blues; through this synthesis he has helped to remap the horizon of possibilities for cellists around the world. But even those in the know may be stunned by the sensitivity of Friesen's response to Barks. "Response" is a misleading term (though not as wrong as "accompaniment," to which this collaboration bears no resemblance). The relation between poet and cellist is closer than that of body and shadow. Like Barks who as translator inhabits Rumi's words, Friesen transforms these poems from within as they are uttered. Translation is itself always an act of reading, of interpretation, of growing the conversation. The conjoined effect of Barks's voice and Friesen's cello extends this act, giving the listener an embodied and unfolding rediscovery of each poem, as if it were happening for the first time, every time. The result is rare and radiant.