"Arranging yet intimate selection filled with scholarship, humor, and insight."
The Clouds Should Know Me By Now
Buddhist Poet Monks of China
Description
This unique collection presents the verse, much of it translated for the first time, of fourteen eminent Chinese Buddhist poet monks. Featuring the original Chinese as well as english translations and historical introductions by Burton Watson, J.P. Seaton, Paul Hansen, James Sanford, and the editors, this book provides an appreciation and understanding of this elegant and traditional expression of spirituality.
"So take a walk with...these cranky, melancholy, lonely, mischievous poet-ancestors. Their songs are stout as a pilgrim's stave or a pair of good shoes, and were meant to be taken on the great journey." --Andrew Schelling, from his Introduction
Reviews
"Living so close to mind and to nature-in the place where these are not two-these ancient monk-poets present us with the eternal stuff of the poem: hills, crags, journeys, the solitary monk or nun, the gentle inexorable pace of the seasons, till we, too, begin to glimpse all this as our own original face."
"These Zen monks, writing between the T'ang Dynasty and the early twentieth century and until now virtually unknown in the West, are among the exemplars of one of the world's richest and most influential literary traditions. The poems, translated by some of the most knowledgeable and talented scholars anywhere, are luminous and elegant in their simplicity, resonating with the wisdom of sages. This is an indispensable book."
"A welcome and tantalizing selection of verse from a tradition of poetry that remains largely untranslated. Reading the poetry of these Chinese monks one has a sense of what it is like to live solely amid nature. They tell it like it is, and their simple humility in the face of the wonders of the natural earth has much to teach us."
