Lucien Stryk – författare

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.”

This is a selection from among the most significant texts in the body of Buddhist literature, culled especially for readers who want a rich, varied, and comprehensive collection in one volume, and includes translations from Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Lao. For the benefit of the newcomer to Buddhism--and to facilitate the use of this volume in an academic context--the pieces are arranged in chronological order and each chapter is preceded by a separate commentary. In addition, there is a comprehensive description of life in India at the time of the Buddha and an outline of his life and mission.

Lucien Stryk's poetry is made of simple things—frost on a windowpane at morning, ducks moving across a pond, a neighbor's fuss over his lawn—set into language that is at once direct and powerful.Years of translating Zen poems and religious texts have helped give Stryk a special sense of the particular, a feel for those details which, because they are so much a part of our lives, seem to define us. Stryk's poetry is neither an attempt to surpass these details nor an attempt to give them significance. It is an activity that exists among them, as ordinary—yet as important—as breath. Stryk's poetic power rests in the sureness of plain speech and his insistence on a direct, sympathetic attention to the world we actually inhabit.Collected Poems, a gathering of three decades of work, contains nearly all Stryk's poems, including the best of his Zen translations and a book–length section of new poetry. This book is a revelation of the wonderful amid the familiar by a poet whose language and vision have found their maturity.

Regional poems representing seventy-nine writers reveal the beginnings of a Midwest renaissance in American poetry.