Japanese Poetry

Download or read book Book of Haikus written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compact collection of more than 500 poems from Jack Kerouac that reveal a lesser known but important side of his literary legacy “Above all, a haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi pastorella.”—Jack Kerouac Renowned for his groundbreaking Beat Generation novel On the Road, Jack Kerouac was also a master of the haiku, the three-line, seventeen-syllable Japanese poetic form. Following the tradition of Basho, Buson, Shiki, Issa, and other poets, Kerouac experimented with this centuries-old genre, taking it beyond strict syllable counts into what he believed was the form’s essence. He incorporated his “American” haiku in novels and in his correspondence, notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, and recordings. In Book of Haikus, Kerouac scholar Regina Weinreich has supplemented a core haiku manuscript from Kerouac’s archives with a generous selection of the rest of his haiku, from both published and unpublished sources.

Download or read book 101 Modern Japanese Poems written by and published by Thames River Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable anthology features 101 modern Japanese poems by 55 poets, including Shuntarō Tanikawa, Minoru Yoshioka, Taeko Tomioka, Nobuo Ayukawa, Tarō Kitamura, Ryūichi Tamura, Hiroshi Yoshino, Noriko Ibaragi, Gōzō Yoshimasu and Yōji Arakawa, carefully selected by the renowned poet and literary critic Makoto Ōoka to ensure that the chosen poems express each poet’s special character. The collection provides a superb introduction to Japanese poetry from the immediate postwar period to the mid-1990s, and through these works one can sense the movement in poetry that reflected the challenging transitions and dizzying transformations occurring in postwar and contemporary Japan. Selected for inclusion in the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP) by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, this first-ever English edition has been translated by Paul McCarthy with both empathy and artistic felicity, and also includes a critical introduction by the Japanese poet and essayist Chūei Yagi. Suitable for both the student/scholar of modern Japanese literature and the general reader with a passion for poetry, the 101 poems in this authoritative collection will delight and inspire.

Download or read book Japanese Death Poems written by and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 1998-04-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.

Download or read book The Ends of Meter in Modern Japanese Poetry written by Scott Mehl and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Ends of Meter in Modern Japanese Poetry, Scott Mehl analyzes the complex response of Meiji-era Japanese poets and readers to the challenge introduced by European verse and the resulting crisis in Japanese poetry. Amidst fierce competition for literary prestige on the national and international stage, poets and critics at the time recognized that the character of Japanese poetic culture was undergoing a fundamental transformation, and the stakes were high: the future of modern Japanese verse. Mehl documents the creation of new Japanese poetic forms, tracing the first invention of Japanese free verse and its subsequent disappearance. He examines the impact of the acclaimed and reviled shintaishi, a new poetic form invented for translating European-language verse and eventually supplanted by the reintroduction of free verse as a Western import. The Ends of Meter in Modern Japanese Poetry draws on materials written in German, Spanish, English, and French, recreating the global poetry culture within which the most ambitious Meiji-era Japanese poets vied for position.

Download or read book One Hundred Poems from the Chinese written by Kenneth Rexroth and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1956 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lyrical world of Chinese poetry in faithful translations by Kenneth Rexroth.

Download or read book How to Read a Japanese Poem written by Steven D. Carter and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to Read a Japanese Poem offers a comprehensive approach to making sense of traditional Japanese poetry of all genres and periods. Steven D. Carter explains to Anglophone students the methods of composition and literary interpretation used by Japanese poets, scholars, and critics from ancient times to the present, and adds commentary that will assist the modern reader. How to Read a Japanese Poem presents readings of poems by major figures such as Saigyō and Bashō as well as lesser known poets, with nearly two hundred examples that encompass all genres of Japanese poetry. The book gives attention to well-known forms such as haikai or haiku, as well as ancient songs, comic poems, and linked verse. Each chapter provides examples of a genre in chronological order, followed by notes about authorship and other contextual details, including the time of composition, physical setting, and social occasion. The commentaries focus on a central feature of Japanese poetic discourse: that poems are often occasional, written in specific situations, and are best read in light of their milieu. Carter elucidates key concepts useful in examining Japanese poetics as well as the technical vocabulary of Japanese poetic discourse, familiarizing students with critical terms and concepts. An appendix offers succinct definitions of technical terms and essays on aesthetic ideals and devices.

Download or read book Only Companion written by and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2006-11-14 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.