What drew Coleman Barks to bring his genius to the
Gitangili
of Rabindranath Tagore? Speaking of these “Song Offerings,” Barks, known and loved for his exquisite transmissions of Rumi, opens us up to the heart of the Indian mystic, Tagore, whose writings have touched poets throughout the world, among them W.B. Yeats, Hart Crane, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound. In his introduction, Coleman Barks explains what inspired him to recreate the 1913 English translation. “I am trying to rephrase his insights in language that does not cloud their brilliance. Tagore’s mysticism feels very simple and abundant (Yeat’s adjective for it), like Wordsworth’s like Whitman’s … It is into that more current idiom that I am trying to place in Tagore’s songs.”