Lucien Stryk

Basho, one of the greatest of Japanese poets and the master of haiku, was also a Buddhist monk and a life-long traveller. His poems combine 'karumi', or lightness of touch, with the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each poem evokes the natural world - the cherry blossom, the leaping frog, the summer moon or the winter snow - suggesting the smallness of human life in comparison to the vastness and drama of nature. Basho himself enjoyed solitude and a life free from possessions, and his haiku are the work of an observant eye and a meditative mind, uncluttered by materialism and alive to the beauty of the world around him.

Haiku of Basho

On Love and Barley

Takashi Ikemoto

Let the Spring Breeze Enter

Zen Poetry

Shinkichi Takahashi

Shinkichi Takahashi is one of the truly great figures in world poetry. In the classic Zen tradition of economy, disciplined attention, and subtlety, Takahashi lucidly captures that which is contemporary in its problems and experiences, yet classic in its quest for unity with the Absolute. Lucien Stryk, Takahashi's fellow poet and close friend, here presents Takahashi's complete body of Zen poems in an English translation that conveys the grace and power of Takahashi's superb art. "A first-rate poet . . . [Takahashi] springs out of some crack between ordinary worlds: that is, there is some genuine madness of the sort striven for in Zen." -- Robert Bly; "We visit places in Takahashi that we once may have visited in a dream, or in a moment too startling to record the perception. . . . You need know nothing of Zen to become immersed in his work. You will inevitably know something of Zen when you emerge." -- Jim Harrison, American Poetry Review

Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi

Triumph of the Sparrow

Haiku Of Issa

Dumpling Field

“Excellent . . . A fine introduction to Chinese and Japanese Zen poetry for all readers” from the editors of Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter (Choice). Capturing in verse the ageless spirit of Zen, these 150 poems reflect the insight of famed masters from the ninth century to the nineteenth. The translators, in collaboration with Zen Master Taigan Takayama, have furnished illuminating commentary on the poems and arranged them as to facilitate comparison between the Chinese and Japanese Zen traditions. The poems themselves, rendered in clear and powerful English, offer a unique approach to Zen Buddhism, “compared with which,” as Lucien Stryk writes, “the many disquisitions on its meaning are as dust to living earth. We see in these poems, as in all important religious art, East or West, revelations of spiritual truths touched by a kind of divinity.” “One of the most intimate and dynamic books yet published on Zen.” —Sanford Goldstein, Arizona Quarterly

The Crane's Bill

Zen Poems of China and Japan

The Crane's Bill (An Evergreen Book)

Modern Japanese Haiku

Cage Of Fireflies

Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews

Zen Poems Prayers

"Bringing together his previously collected poems as well as the three books published since then, a sampling of his renowned translations of haiku, and a generous number of previously unpublished new poems, this latest collection by poet and translator Lucien Stryk is evidence of the popular and critical acclaim for an important contributor to twentieth-century letters." From Amazon.

New & Collected Poems

And Still Birds Sing

Two parts of this collection comprise Stryk's poems of childhood, neighbors, painting and sculpture, travels. The third is devoted to 72 freshly translated pieces of Issa, one of Japan's great haiku poets. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Of Pen and Ink and Paper Scraps

Writings on Poetry and Zen

Encounter With Zen

From the editors of Zen Poems of China and Japan comes the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind to appear in English. This collaboration between a Japanese scholar and an American poet has rendered translations both precise and sublime, and their selections, which span fifteen hundred years—from the early T’ang dynasty to the present day—include many poems that have never before been translated into English. Stryk and Ikemoto offer us Zen poetry in all its diversity: Chinese poems of enlightenment and death, poems of the Japanese masters, many haiku—the quintessential Zen art—and an impressive selection of poems by Shinkichi Takahashi, Japan’s greatest contemporary Zen poet. With Zen Poetry, Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto have graced us with a compellingly beautiful collection, which in their translations is pure literary pleasure, illuminating the world vision to which these poems give permanent expression.

A Selection of Poems

Taproot

This superb anthology, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind to appear in English, is the work of an American poet and a Japanese scholar.

Lucien Stryk

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