Love’s Alchemy:
Poems from the Sufi Tradition

Alternate title: Love’s Alchemy: Rumi and the Persian Sufi Poets

Poetry reading, musical performance, and talk by David and Sabrineh Fideler

Rumi is not alone, but an extraordinarily great representative of a vast, thousand-year-old tradition of Persian mystical poetry — a magnificent, still-living tradition that speaks a common language. In this presentation, David Fideler will discuss the symbols, meanings, and traditional uses of Sufi poetry, and how, according to the Sufi tradition, the path of love can lead us beyond our limited selves. David and his wife Sabrineh will also read and perform short poems from Rumi and other Sufi poets, in both Persian and English, with musical accompaniment on traditional instruments.


About the Book

The thirteenth-century poet Rumi is just one voice in the poetry of Sufism, the timeless Persian mystical tradition. The poems and epigrams collected in Love’s Alchemy represent all of the major poets, including Rumi, of this magnificent art. While many recent bestsellers have been interpretations from other English translations, Sabrineh and David Fideler work from the original Persian sources. The book offers faithful yet elegant translations from 170 of the best poems written in ruba‘i form: concise, tightly focused meditations that span only four lines, but which reveal worlds of meaning. The poems explore many aspects of human life and the spiritual path, but center on the liberating power of love. Also included are an extensive introduction, a glossary, and notes that place these wonderful poems in cultural, historical, and religious context.

About the Presenters

David Fideler has worked as an editor, publisher, college professor, and the program director of a humanities center. He holds a PhD in philosophy and cultural studies and is a student of Sufism and Persian mystical poetry.

Sabrineh Fideler is a native speaker of Persian and holds a degree in Persian–English translation from Azad University. She has translated several books into Persian, all on languages.

Their book, Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition (New World Library, 2006), contains many works of Persian Sufi poetry — and many Persian poets — never before translated into English.