Anthony Thwaite

Geoffrey Bownas

A broad-reaching anthology contains accessible translations of more than 700 poems and includes selections from periods ranging from the Nara and Heian to the Kamakura and Muramachi eras, in a treasury that includes examples of tanka, haiku and complex forms. Reprint.

The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse

Gavin

I feel able to say it at last: haiku is pathological, a genre absolutely limited to the engraving of flat single images. And single (or paired) verbal images of nature do nothing for me; it is relation and juxtaposition and story and reductios and original presentation that give images life. The haiku leaves almost no room for these. (This is not about length; the senryu retains wonderful possibilities, because they are animated by satire rather than po-faced nature-worship. Jokes can stand alone.)

This book cannot be blamed for being half haiku, because that mechanical law ruled Japanese poetry for thousands of years and this is first of all a historical selection. Lots more to see. 

Currently I am only fond of the ancient gnostic hermits and the droll postwar internationalists (no multi-culturalists here). Many of the others emote at us too directly - the likes of "Oh how // I miss my wife // out here // on the border wall" - which brittle superficiality fails Wei Tai's test and mine. In general their ancients have dated much better than ours, perhaps because they grokked ironic minimalism a thousand years before us.

The emperors and shoguns all write poetry, are still all required to profess about the land that they perch upon. Meiji:

  
    In newspapers, all seethe doings of the world,which lead nowhere.Better never written!
  

Amen. I liked Yamanoue Okura, Yakamochi, the Kokinshū, Ki Tsurayuki, Tsuboi Shigeji, Kaneko Mitsuhara, Takahashi Mutsuo. I absolutely do not have sufficient knowledge to stop there. Skip Bownas' enormous Preface too, you don't need it.

In one sentence: 無.

The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse

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