Companions for the Journey – serie

The poems of Yang Wan-Li (1127-1206), esteemed as one of the masters of Southern Sung poetry, reflect the magnificent landscape paintings of Sung China. His work is full of humanity and a zest for living, expressed in direct, unadorned language.

The essence of Zen is contained in the phrases and poems presented here, along with an introduction by Gary Snyder. The sayings range from profound to mystifying to comical and appear in vivid, poetic English. First compiled in 15th century Japan, the book contains Zen phrases and verses taken from Zen classics, sutras, and the poetry of China.

Basho (1644-1694) is the most famous Haiku poet of Japan. He made his living as a teacher and writer of Haiku and is celebrated for his many travels around Japan, which he recorded in travel journals. This translation of his most mature journal, Oku-No-Hosomichi, details the most arduous part of a nine-month journey with his friend and disciple, Sora, through the backlands north of the capital, west to the Japan Sea and back toward Kyoto. More than a record of the journey, Basho's journal is a poetic sequence that has become a centre of the Japanese mind/heart. Ten illustrations by Hide Oshiro illuminate the text.

"Traveler, there is no road; you make your path as you walk". While others suggest taking the road less travelled, Antonio Machado suggests that we each make our own road. In this series of brief poems Machado utilises traditional Spanish verse forms to create a wide ranging collection of reflections and philosophical insights in the form of aphorisms. Poems that have the immediacy of epigrams or Japanese haiku. Antonio Machado (1875-1939) is one of the greatest poets of 20th century Spain. He along with Juan Ramon Jimenez and Miguel de Unamuno formed the generation of 1898, which ushered in a new Spanish poetics.

This is the only translation of the work of this important haiku poet in English. Buson (1716-1783), along with Basho and Issa, is recognised as one of the three Japanese masters of the haiku. In addition to a large selection of haiku, the book also includes a selection of Buson's prose and a critical introduction.

Published in France in 1951 and appearing for the first time in English, this volume also reproduces the eight drawings by Marc Chagall that appeared in the original. "Goll loved a real woman...it may be that Goll will be remembered most for these ...love poems unique in modern poetry..." -- Paul Zweig.

"The Unswept Path" offers a diverse gathering of American poets who have chosen the haiku as one of the forms in which they write. Each of these poets has worked the territory of the haiku into a personal landscape, and they offer a panorama of images and sounds, joy and sadness, recollection and thought. A wonderful introduction to the art of the haiku for the writer and reader alike. Poets included are: John Brandi; Willliam J Higginson; Margaret Chula; Elizabeth Searle Lamb; Cid Corman; Michael McClure; Diane DiPrima; Sonia Sanchez; Patricia Donegan; Steve Sanfield; Penny Harter; Edith Shiffert; Christopher Herold.

"With this volume, Chaves makes an outstanding contribution to the books that present classical Chinese poetry in both accurate and enjoyable English translation."-Choice Yuan Hung-tao (1568-1610) was the greatest poet of Ming dynasty China. His poetry and essays brilliantly exhibit an originality and vitality that were lacking in the writing of his contemporaries. The writings of Yuan and his two brothers reveal these men to have been individualists who made outstanding contributions to the growth and development of poetry, presenting a penetrating picture of Ming society. Jonathan Chaves is a professor of Chinese at George Washington University and the translator of several volumes of Chinese poetry, including Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow.

This selection of Korean Zen poems, spanning twelve centuries, distils the essence of Korean Buddhism. The poets range from Great Master Wonhyo (617-686), the founder of Korean Buddhism, to Choeui Eusoon (1786-1866), a hermit-monk whose poems address the monk's primary goal of seeking enlightenment. Although the age of traditional Buddhism ended in Korea by the early twentieth century when the country was exposed to the relentless flow of Western culture, the poets writing in Korea today have a deep respect for those who went before them and incorporate Buddhist lore into their work, thus enabling the Zen poets to continue to contribute to the development of Korean literature.

A lovely gift book of songs of love and wisdom drawn from the classic Japanese poetry collection, the "Kanginshu"; interspersed with sumie drawings.

A poetry and life unique in the lineage of the Dalai Lama. The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706), refused to take full monastic vows and returned to the world, loving alcohol, archery, and women with a passion that perhaps suggests he had a premonition of his early death at the age of twenty-four.

The fruits of the season, James Wright's luminous prose captures eternal moments in his travels through Italy and France.

Two thousand years have passed since the first of these poems were composed. A new introduction prefaces this expanded edition of Andrew Schelling's remarkable translations.

How do Bengali women love in times of social transition and political upheaval? These poems look at how Bengali women tell their truths of the heart and mind through their struggles for equality, opportunity, and recognition in a changing society. The poems follow a subtle trajectory through the stages of love: first love; marriage; separation; aging and death; and ultimate supreme, universal love, of which romantic love is an imperfect reflection.

This is a wonderful collection of classic Chinese poems on the themes of parting and exile. The poems capture brief meetings between poet friends over a jug of wine, the lament of lovers parting, and the seclusion of the hermit. One can smell the incense smoke, hear the night rain on an autumn lake, and see the moon shining through the pines.

"Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry, and intelligence in a new geometry of words...His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity."-Octavio Paz "In the books by Ruy-Sanchez we find again the erotic conviction that allows us to read with all the skin. The erotic, in his narratives, is not a subject or a phrase, it is the clay they are made of. In his novels every experience, trivial or extraordinary, breathes through the erotic."-Alberto Manguel In Mogador-the city of desire-a woman, tired of her lover's insensitivity, decides to pose a challenge to him: She will make love with him only when he tells her about a new garden in the city. The problem is that he must search for gardens where one least expects to find them, and he may not invent them. To discover hidden gardens, he will have to tune his most powerful impulses. Alberto Ruy-Sanchez examines the complex nature of enduring intimacy and the daily challenge of addressing the ever-changing desires of the other.He considers the perpetual quest to re-create the magical moment when paradise was first discovered in the body of the beloved. Alberto Ruy-Sanchez is a Mexican writer and author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, many of which have been translated, including his novel Mogador, published by City Lights Publishers in 1992. Rhonda Dahl Buchanan is a professor of Spanish and the director of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Her books of translation include The Entre Rios Trilogy by Perla Suez and Quick Fix: Sudden Fiction by Ana Maria Shua.

Ryokan (1758-1831) was a poet, master calligrapher, Zen hermit, and is one of the most beloved poets of Japan. Instead of becoming the head of a Zen temple, he preferred the simple and independent life of a hermit. Ryokan's poetry is simple, direct, and colloquial in expression.

Good poetry contains the kind of knowledge we search for, the kind that resonates in the heart as well as the mind. The poems in this anthology are timeless, spanning two millenniums, and are drawn from many different centuries and cultures. The voices range from ancient China, Japan, and India to contemporary America and Europe. What they share is a living spirit that can help us change the way we see ourselves, and the world. Contributors include Han-shan, Du Fu, Li Po, Ryokan, Issa, Yosa Buson, Ikkyu, Rumi, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Tomas Transtromer, Rolf Jacobsen, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Denise Levertov, Jane Hirshfield, Gary Snyder, Joseph Bruchac, Sam Hamill, James Wright, Ilya Kaminsky, Robert Bly, and many others.

"Sarah Truman's closely observed jaunt in China and Tibet offers some priceless scenes, from trying to hilarious. How lucky she is to be watched over in her travels by the gentle, lively Bodhisattva of Compassion Kwan Yin."—Sandy Boucher, author of Discovering Kwan YinSarah E. Truman explores a lifelong affinity with Guan Yin in a two-year journey through China filled with unexpected encounters. She portrays China as a country where life is rooted in raw, street-level survival, and where Guan Yin can only be experienced after all concepts, preconceived notions, and spiritual illusions are abandoned.

"The most moving, beautiful, and eloquent expression of wonder in literature. If there has been anything new in recent literature of any type it is this undefinable book: poetry, short tales, and intelligence in each paragraph. A delight."--Jeanne Teixidor Alberto Ruy-Sanchez is an award-winning Mexican writer and editor.

Mountain Tasting gathers a wide cross section of haiku and a selection of the diaries of the wandering Japanese poet, Santoka (1882-1940). Santoka lived his life in the long zen hermit wandering poetic tradition of Japan that includes Basho, Ryokan and Saigyo. His zen practice was that of solitary walking and begging. The open road was to become both his

"Shiki's distinctive vision and direct expression make a tone recognizably his own, conveyed beautifully in these pages' translations. We hear Shiki's haiku as the voice of a friend bringing complex news in a few intimate words. These haiku are drawn from a world that feels close to our own, and they bring our own lives and world closer. Shiki's poems are necessary and delicious as mountain water, carrying the mountain's hidden minerals from inside it to inside us." —Jane Hirshfield, author of The Heart of Haiku and The Ink Dark MoonLast year's dreamI wake to this year'srealityShiki is considered by the Japanese as one of the masters of haiku. He radically reformed the haiku, suggesting "sketching from life" as an aesthetic.

Merz is keenly attentive to daily life as a revelator of essentialtruths, and thus uses poetry as a way of returning closer to it; and“to unbecome what was.”  Merz' “nearing” and “distancing” processestake place inside us, through language. By summing up so gently andexactly (but also sometimes drolly or pointedly) the movement ofduality, Merz enables us to sense more fully, time and again, what itmeans to be alive: that “strange exhilaration within,” as he puts itin another of these splendid poems so vividly and resourcefullytranslated by Marc Vincenz.

A true companion for the journey, Precious Mirror, combines Kobun Chino’s brilliant calligraphy with translations of the poems into English enface. Kobun Chino Otogawa was an instrumental figure in the transmission of Zen to America and its evolution within our culture. Although he came to assist Shunryu Suzuki at the San Francisco Zen Center, Kobun was enamored of the way Zen, unfettered, blossomed in new soil and he followed it wherever it grew. For Kobun, Zen was not an institution, but the elemental nature of every aspect of our lives and existed in myriad forms. Kobun founded four temples, taught Buddhism at Stanford and Naropa University, demonstrated and taught Calligraphy and Archery. When Steve Jobs founded Next Computer, Kobun was listed as it's Spiritual Director.