In the great tradition of Rumi and Hafez, Baraka Blue’s poetry is at once ecstatic and humorous, insightful and amorous, joyful and nostalgic.
In flashes of the visionary, the playful, the passionate, the lyrical, and the profound, Baraka Blue's words serve as a lively spiritual companion to all seekers, lovers and people of heart.

Newly Released Paperback

Limited Edition Hardbound

“Baraka Blue has taken his place as the leading exponent of Sufi inspired verse in the English language and the clear successor to the late Daniel Abdal Hayy Moore who virtually invented the genre. The poet Caroline Forche called Moore “a rarity among his contemporaries - a surrealist of the sacred.”
By contrast, the younger poet might be called “a realist of the sacred.”

His poetry invokes the immediacy of the Divine Presence as a constant, contemplative reality. He looks for God in everything, never deviating from this essential vision. The Art of Remembrance is another tour de force from the American Muslim poet, a rich collection of verse steeped in the metaphysical language of Islamic spirituality, with a subliminal Hip-Hop heartbeat.”

— MICHAEL SUGICH - AUTHOR OF SIGNS ON THE HORIZON, HEART’S TURN, & EXEMPLARS FOR OUR TIME

“Baraka Blue's poetry is not only beautiful, powerful, lyrical and profound, it also has this unique ability to awaken something deep within the reader, to help us remember ancient wisdom that many of our species have forgotten. This is more than art, it is alchemy."

— ADEYINKA MUHAMMAD MENDES - POET, TEACHER, TRANSLATOR AND FOUNDER OF THE NIBRAS FOUNDATION 

“In these moving lines, the call of the eternal reverberates in the rhythms of the present. In Baraka Blue one hears the teachings of Rumi, Ibn Ata'allah and others in a form that echoes the voice of Walt Whitman.”

— JOSEPH LUMBARD - THE STUDY QURAN, TRANSLATOR, COMMENTARY WRITER, GENERAL EDITOR

“Baraka Blue’s [writing] is a brilliant and profound contemporary reflection on the very best of Sufi poetry, and itself an extension of that tradition. A thousand years ago, Sufi poetry found sublime expressions in Persian, and then Urdu and Turkish among other languages. Today, we are witnessing the emergence of Sufi poetry in English.
What a joy to witness this birth.”

— OMID SAFI, DUKE UNIVERSITY - AUTHOR OF RADICAL LOVE: TEACHINGS FROM THE ISLAMIC MYSTICAL TRADITION

“As Emerson wrote to Whitman upon first reading Leaves of Grass,
so I write...
Baraka Blue, 'I greet you at the beginning of a great career.”

— DANIEL ABDAL-HAYY MOORE - POET, ESSAYIST, PLAYWRIGHT AND AUTHOR OF DAWN VISIONS (CITY LIGHTS BOOKS)

“As with other languages in the past, the fecundating rains of the Quranic revelation have begun to coax forth blossoms of profound spiritual poetry from the English language.

Like the first blooms of spring, the appearance of this garden of verses is cause for celebration—not only of the timeless wisdom and beauty reflected therein—but of the coming flood of English Sufi poetry of which this collection is a harbinger.”

– OLUDAMINI OGUNNAIKE - UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, AUTHOR OF POETRY IN PRAISE OF PROPHETIC PERFECTION: A STUDY OF WEST AFRICAN MADIH POETRY AND ITS PRECEDENTS 

“Baraka Blue’s poems are the songs of a soul suffused with devotion to the Prophet, the boundaryless horizons of Revelation, and echoes of hip hop.” 

— KABIR HELMINSKI - TRANSLATOR AND AUTHOR OF LIVING PRESENCE AND THE POCKET RUMI, sufism.org

“In The Art of Remembrance contemporary Sufi poet Baraka Blue offers a window into his soul by sharing the majestic and creative ways in which the world of English forms can give voice to and crystallize for seekers the primordial silence and spiritual meanings that reside in the world of the Formless.”

 — MOHAMMED RUSTOM - AUTHOR OF INRUSHES OF THE HEART: THE SUFI PHILOSOPHY OF ‘AYN AL-QUDAT 

- Bound in black vegan leather blocked in gold foil with a debossed eight-fold geometric design

- Gold head and tail bands

- Set in Lapidary typeface

- Printed on 92gsm Japanese Speciart paper with 4 special Pantone inks

- 142gsm Japanese Speciart paper end sheets

- 176 pages

- Gold Ribbon Marker

- 37 Unique works of calligraphy from the world renowned Ulu Camii Mosque in Bursa, Turkey

- Unique calligraphy by Soraya Syed (Art of The Pen)

- Book design, typesetting and production by Mukhtar Sanders (Inspiral Design)

A Note from the Author

Dear reader,

The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “God is beautiful and loves beauty.” One of the definitions of beauty (ihsan) he gave us is, “to worship God as if you see Him, and if you don’t see Him, He sees you.” The way he called us to is a way of presence with the Source of Beauty who is behind all forms and a way of beautifying the soul to reflect this Beauty. This is the Art of Remembrance. We pray this book is a doorway to joy, insight, beauty, and remembrance.

—Baraka Blue