The Egyptian poet Umar Ibn al-Farid (1181-1235) is according to translator Emil Homerin "the most venerated poet in Arabic, comparable to John Donne in English or St. John of the Cross in Spanish." In his preface to this volume in "The Classics of Western Spirituality," Michael Sells notes that poetry in the Islamic world is a living tradition at the center of cultural life. He writes: "There is a moment during the recitation of a poem when the eyes of the reciter and audience moisten from a combination of aesthetic pleasure and remembrance of loss. The Arabic term for this moment — when body, mind, and breathing begin to feel a new, slower, rhythm — is tarab. The term has no single equivalent in English. Tarab refers to a deep sense of aesthetic appreciation, a kind of love intoxication, a sense of being overcome with waves of remembrance of what is at the core of one's being and lies too deep for other modes of thought to engage."
This paperback contains Umar Ibn al-Farid's "Wine Ode," which celebrates the love flowing between God and those who are in rapture with Him; "Poem of the Sufi Way," a mystical poem with 260 verses; and "Adorned Proem to the Diwan," a tribute to the poet written by his grandson.
There is certainly a love intoxication apparent in the "Poem of the Sufi Way" where the heart of the narrator is "a holy house" and every day is a holy day when the Beloved is glimpsed. Here silence is reverenced, and the holy war is a battle against one's own selfishness. The commentary on the poem probes its main themes, references to the Qur'an and the psychology of Sufi states of altered consciousness.