Persian Poetry and the Third Place: Rumi, Hafez, and Spiritual Longing

In this conversation with Bill Moyers, poet Robert Bly examines why Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez have become guiding lights for American poetry and consciousness over the past decade. He argues that these 13th and 14th-century Islamic mystics offer a corrective to Western materialism and ego-driven living. Through careful translation and recitation, Bly demonstrates how these poets teach readers to access a "third place"—a realm beyond body and soul where spiritual presence and collective human genius dwell—and how this access depends on presence, longing, and the willingness to abandon obsessive achievement.

Why Have Rumi and Hafez Become So Central to American Poetry?

Rumi and Hafez represent a necessary infusion of spiritual vision into contemporary American literary culture. Bly notes that Rumi in particular has been "the guiding light of American poetry for the last five or ten years," a phenomenon he attributes not to mere fashion but to a genuine hunger for wisdom that Western secular poetry alone cannot satisfy. These poets, separated from us by centuries and a different language, speak to something urgent in modern readers: the recognition that material accumulation and social status do not constitute a full human life.

Bly also frames the study of these poets as an ethical gesture. "If we're criticizing the Muslim world so much, we should be able to give thanks for the genius that is there," he tells Moyers. This is not an apology but a recognition that Western critique often blinds us to the profound spiritual and artistic achievements within Islamic civilization. By returning to Rumi and Hafez, American readers participate in a kind of intellectual humility—an acknowledgment that wisdom flows from cultures beyond our own.

What Is the "Third Place" That Bly Describes?

Central to Bly's spiritual philosophy is the concept of the "third place"—a realm distinct from both body and soul. When asked if he has discovered what this "third place" is after thirty years of contemplation, Bly offers a strikingly clear answer: "It's a place where all of the geniuses and the lovely people and the brilliant women and all of them all go there and they watch over us a little bit. And once in a while they'll say, 'Drop that line, it's no good.'"

This third place is not abstract theology but a lived reality accessible through poetry and contemplation. Bly suggests that poets—and people engaged in genuine creative work—can "go almost immediately to this third world" when translating and studying mystics like Hafez and Rumi. Yet most of us remain strangers to this realm. Why? "I suppose it's because we think too much about our houses and our places," Bly muses. The third place requires a loosening of ego's grip on identity, security, and the accumulation of personal property and status.

How Do Hafez's Poems Strip Away Obsession?

Bly recites several verses from Hafez to illustrate the Persian poet's method of spiritual correction. One poem opens with a sobering inventory: "The foods turned out by the factories of time and space are not all that great. Bring some wine because the good things of this world are not all that great." Rather than celebrating worldly pleasures, Hafez uses this language of mild disappointment to dismantle the reader's illusions about what the world can provide.

The poem continues with radical leveling: "The true kingdom comes to you without any breaking of bones. If that weren't so, achieving the garden through your own labors wouldn't be all that great." Hafez here dissolves the notion that spiritual attainment requires heroic effort or suffering. Grace, the poem insists, arrives unbidden. The striving ego creates a false burden.

Bly emphasizes that Hafez "is withdrawing all our obsessions"—our panic about time, our need to complete tasks, our fear of death. In another verse, Hafez addresses the remaining days of life: "In the five days remaining to you in this rest stop before you go to the grave, take it easy. Give yourself time because time is not all that great." This is not escapism but a profound teaching: the tyranny of time-consciousness creates unnecessary suffering. When we release the fantasy that we must accomplish everything, we become free.

The final poem Bly shares targets spiritual pride itself. "You Puritans on the stone floor, you are not safe from the tricks of God's zeal. The distance between the cloister and the tavern we love is not all that great." Even religious discipline, if pursued with ego-driven intensity, becomes another form of delusion. The boundary between asceticism and ordinary life collapses when the seeker understands that all paths lead to the same truth.

What Does Rumi Teach About Absence and Longing?

Rumi, whom Bly calls simply "a genius," approaches the spiritual path through the language of absence and yearning. Bly's translation captures this intensity: "I don't like it here, but I want to go back. According to the old knowers, if you're absent from the one you love even for 1 second, that ruins the whole thing."

This teaching inverts conventional spiritual practice. Rumi does not counsel detachment or indifference; instead, he glorifies the pain of separation as the surest sign of genuine connection to the Divine. The "one you love" is not a human beloved alone but the ultimate reality, God, the Beloved. Any moment of disconnection—even a single second of forgetfulness—represents a break in the fundamental bond that constitutes the soul's wholeness.

Bly goes on to read more of Rumi's psychological acuity: "There must be someone. Just to find one sign of the other world in this town would be helpful." Rumi articulates a common spiritual condition: the seeker isolated in a world of ordinary people, desperate for even a glimpse of something transcendent. "You know the great Chinese Simurgh bird got caught in this net. What can I do? I'm only a man." The legendary bird—a symbol of the divine spirit—has become trapped in the material world. The speaker's helplessness mirrors that of the captive bird.

How Does Kabir's Teaching on Intensity Relate to Divine Encounter?

Although Kabir, a 14th-century Indian poet, is not Persian, Bly places him alongside Hafez and Rumi as a teacher of the same essential wisdom. Kabir's poem "Friend" offers a bracing urgency: "Hope for the guest while you are alive. Jump into experience while you are alive. Think and think while you are alive. What you call salvation belongs to the time before death."

Kabir explicitly rejects the fantasy that spiritual transformation can occur posthumously. "If you don't break your ropes while you are alive, do you think that ghosts will do it after? The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic just because the body's rotten, that's all fantasy." This teaching demolishes the assumption that we can defer awakening until death or the afterlife. Enlightenment is not a future promise but a present possibility that vanishes if neglected.

Bly highlights Kabir's central teaching on longing itself: "Kabir says this, 'When the guest is being searched for, it's the intensity of the longing for the guest that does all the work.' And he says, 'Look at me and you'll see a slave of that intensity.'" The spiritual path is not powered by intellectual understanding or moral effort but by the raw intensity of desire for the Divine. Kabir identifies himself as enslaved to this longing—and in that surrender finds freedom.

What Is the Role of Spiritual Translation?

Bly's work as a translator of Rumi, Hafez, and Kabir is not merely academic. He demonstrates how translation serves as a spiritual technology, a method for transferring spiritual presence across linguistic and temporal boundaries. When he reads "If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the city of death" and then contemporizes it—"you will simply end up with a suite in the Ramada Inn of death"—he shows that these ancient teachings require continuous retranslation to pierce modern consciousness.

The act of translation requires the translator to inhabit the poet's voice and vision. Bly suggests that when one translates truly, one "goes almost immediately to this third world" where the original poet dwells. The translator becomes a kind of conduit, allowing the spiritual presence of the ancient master to flow into contemporary ears.

How Does Poetry Awaken Children to Deeper Reality?

Bly shifts the conversation toward the function of poetry in human development. He speaks of children's natural capacity to sense what lies beyond the visible world—a capacity that materialist culture systematically erodes. Early exposure to genuine poetry, including translations of Persian masters, can preserve this sensitivity.

He argues that many people lose touch with poetry and spiritual awareness because they internalize cultural messages that dismiss such concerns as impractical or indulgent. Yet poetry's role is precisely to counteract this narrowing of consciousness. A child who learns to love poetry and poets may sustain contact with the "third place" into adulthood, maintaining the capacity for wonder and spiritual receptivity that most adults have abandoned.

Where to Go From Here

Readers interested in deepening their engagement with these ideas might begin by seeking out Robert Bly's translations of Rumi and Hafez, noting how his renderings animate these medieval poets for contemporary ears. The key practice Bly models is receptive reading—approaching these poems not as historical artifacts but as living presences capable of shifting consciousness.

Second, consider Bly's recurring emphasis on the "third place" as distinct from both material achievement and abstract spirituality. Contemplative practice—whether through poetry, meditation, or prayer—creates space for access to this realm where human genius and divine presence meet. Notice when you are caught in obsessive thinking about time, status, or accomplishment, and ask whether Hafez's gentle correction might apply: is this really all that great?

Finally, recognize that encounters with poets from other traditions are not mere cultural tourism. They represent a form of political and spiritual humility—an acknowledgment that wisdom is not the monopoly of any single culture or era. By studying Rumi and Hafez with genuine openness, readers participate in a necessary corrective to cultural arrogance and reconnect with the universal human longing for transcendence that these poets articulate with unparalleled grace.