Coleman Barks, Who Popularized the Islamic Poet Rumi in the West, Dies at 88

One day in 1976, the poet Robert Bly handed his close friend Coleman Barks an old translation of several works by Rumi, the 13th-century Persian writer, encouraging him to render them in modern free verse. “Release the poems from their cages,” Mr. Bly said. Mr. Barks, though a poet himself, was an unlikely choice for []