Fairy Chimneys rock formation, nearby Gorëme, in Cappadocia, central Turkey (wikimedia.org)

Coleman Barks & Cappadocia It's out of this world— not sculpted by aliens but spewed out from the earth 30 million years ago— volcanic ash compressed into rock carved by wind & rain into Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia— these capped-cone rocks 130 feet high look like arrays of Platonic Lambda Λ that Plato called "Soul of the Universe". Aside from Plotinus, none wrote about the soul better than the mystic Rumi, best-selling poet in America thanks to the translations of Coleman Barks. In his Stanford talk on Rumi's poetry, Barks said he was a geography whiz in his Chattanooga, Tennessee school, memorizing all the capitals in the Atlas. In the dining hall, classmates could shout out "Bulgaria", he would reply "Sofia", "Finland"— "Helsinki", "Mongolia"— "Ulan Bator". Perfect answer every time— none stumped him. His Latin teacher found an old basement map and yelled out across the quad— "Cappadocia!" "He said the look on my face named me"— from then on, they all nicknamed him "Capp". Forty years later, Barks learned the capital of Cappadocia was Ikonium or Konya Turkey, where Rumi lived and is buried— whose poetry would become his life's work. Barks said "I was named after something I didn't know!" Now these Fairy Chimneys— "rocks rising to a point" (or Chattanooga), sing to me of Rumi & mysteries of the soul.   — Peter Y. Chou       Mountain View, 2-16-2016

Coleman Barks Stanford Talk (5-13-2009) Unseen Rain (1986) Open Secret (1984)