“Rexroth’s readings from the Japanese master poets are breathtaking in their simplicity and clarity.”—The New York Times I go out of the darkness Onto a road of darkness Lit only by the far off Moon on the edge of the mountains. —Izumi Shikobu Over the years, thousands of readers have discovered the beauty of classic Japanese poetry through the superb English versions by the great American poet Kenneth Rexroth. Mostly haiku, these poems range from the classical and medieval to modern poetry, with an emphasis on folk songs and love lyrics. Because women played such an outstanding role in Japanese literature, included here are selections from their work, including the contemporary, deeply sensuous Marichiko. This elegant, beautifully designed gift book of poems spanning many centuries presents the original texts in romanji, the transliteration into the Western alphabet.

A collection of Japanese poems accompanied by their English translations.

"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.

Poetry. East Asia Studies. Finalist for the 2011 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu. Cover art by Mauro Zamora. TIME OF SKY & CASTLES IN THE AIR is the first full-length translation of Ayane Kawata's poetry to be published in English. This single volume contains Kawata's first book of poems, Time of Sky (first published in Japanese by Kumo Publishers, 1969), and her sixth, Castles in the Air: A Dream Journal (first published in Japanese by Shoshi Yamada, 1991). "In TIME OF SKY we find terse lines that are unresolved--the tension is neither built nor released, but exists as if in its natural state, a note of music forever in suspension. It never arrives--it is and never was home.... Its poems are derived from a notebook the author kept for 15 years, in which she recorded her dreams every morning upon waking...The logic in these prose poems may feel familiar to us as dream logic, but we also find in them the complexity and anxiety attendant to of a lifetime spent living in a culture not one's own, an ongoing reckoning with one's dangers and desires, and the difficulty (and absurdity) of trying to communicate with others."--Sawako Nakayasu from the Afterword "In Japan, Kawata's work is noted primarily for its stark, vivid depictions of life--not so much life as lived by a specific person, but more the sense of 'living-ness.' To the Japanese eye and ear, Kawata's poetry cuts through to the 'overwhelming mysteries' that lie beneath everyday activities, and it does so with necessity. Hers are aggressive poems that look frankly at what it means to be a Japanese woman both inside Japan and away."--Melinda Markham

Written by court princesses, exiled officials, Zen priests, and recluses, the 150 poems translated here represent the rich diversity of Japan’s poetic tradition. Varying in tone from the sensuous and erotic to the profoundly spiritual, each poem captures a sense of the poignant beauty and longing known only in the fleeting experience of the moment. The translator has selected these five-line tanka—one of the great traditional verse forms of Japanese literature—from sources ranging from the classical imperial anthologies of the eighth and tenth centuries to works of the early twentieth century.

Haiku and occasional essays from an eccentric personality.