In April 1926, the Japanese poet Taneda Santoka (1882--1940) set
off on the first of many walking trips, journeys in which he
tramped thousands of miles through the Japanese countryside. These
journeys were part of his religious training as a Buddhist monk as
well as literary inspiration for his memorable and often painfully
moving poems. The works he wrote during this time comprise a record
of his quest for spiritual enlightenment.
Although Santoka was master of conventional-style haiku, which
he wrote in his youth, the vast majority of his works, and those
for which he is most admired, are in free-verse form. He also left
a number of diaries in which he frequently recorded the
circumstances that had led to the composition of a particular poem
or group of poems. In "For All My Walking, " master translator
Burton Watson makes Santoka's life story and literary journeys
available to English-speaking readers and students of haiku and Zen
Buddhism. He allows us to meet Santoka directly, not by withholding
his own opinions but by leaving room for us to form our own.
Watson's translations bring across not only the poetry but also the
emotional force at the core of the poems.
This volume includes 245 of Santoka's poems and of excerpts from
his prose diary, along with a chronology of his life and a
compelling introduction that provides historical and biographical
context to Taneda Santoka's work.
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