About the book
BOOK SUMMARY
A collection of spiritual poems from the 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi, exploring universal themes of love, friendship, and humanity’s collective spiritual journey.
Published 13th Century
Poetry
416 pages
God, donkeys, and gourdcrafting
June 6, 2026
I really don’t understand poetry, but I gave this an honest shot. There were a few passages I found lovely and could resonate with, but the pieces I enjoyed most were the ones that felt more like short stories than poems. Probably because I actually know how to follow a short story.
I also enjoyed the ones that felt wildly inappropriate, like “The Importance of Gourdcrafting,” in which a woman literally causes her own death by having sex with a donkey without the requisite moderation. (What??)
Most of the poems seem to be conveying some kind of symbolic message about dissolving the ego that separates the self from God. But taken at surface level, that symbolism could get pretty strange. God is often referred to as “The Beloved,” and divine love is frequently represented through romantic longing, which sometimes made the poems feel surprisingly sensual, or even homoerotic, for an old Islamic text.
kelsi’s reading diary 