Sufi Poets and Sufi Poetry

Sufism and the encounters that Sufism facilitates --encounters with God, love, and the deepest aspects of human consciousness-- have evoked feelings in Sufis that have poured out through their ravaged hearts onto their lucid tongues, providing us with some of the most beautiful and profound poetry ever written.

Some of the most prominent of the Sufis who wrote poetry were Rumi, Attar, and Hafez (in Persian), Hallaj and Ibn al-Farid (in Arabic), and Yunus Emre (in Turkish). Today Sufi poetry continues in both traditional Islamic languages and also with English languages poets such as Coleman Barks and Daniel Ladinsky --whose poetic dances with Rumi and Hafez (respectively) have become well known-- and Daniel 'Abd al-Hayy Moore (aka Daniel Moore), an American Sufi whose poetic roots draw sustenance from both the poetry of his friends of the "beat generation" such as Allen Ginsburg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti as well as from his ecstatic decades of drinking from the cup of Sufism via its cupbearer, Muhammad Rasulullah (sallallahu 'alayhi wa-sallam).

Sufi Poetry in Translation and the Original Languages

Sufi Poets who wrote in Persian