This anthology brings togethere in convenient form a rich selection
of Japanese poetry in traditional genres dating back from the
earliest times to the twentieth century. With more than 1,100
poems, it is the most varied and comprehensive selection of
traditional Japanese poetry now available in English.
Ezra Pound called poetry "the most concentrated form of verbal
expression," and the great poets of Japan wrote poems as charged
and compressed as poems can be. The Japanese language, with its few
consonates and even fewer vowels, did not lend itself to expansive
forms, making small seem better and perhaps more powerful. There is
also the historical context in which Japanese poetry developed--the
highly refined society of the early courts of Nara and Kyoto. In
this setting, poetry came to be used as much for communication
between lovers and friends as for artistic expression, and a
tradition of cryptic statement evolved, with notes passed from
sleeve to sleeve or conundrums exchanged furtively in the night.
Add to this the high sense of decorum that dominated court society
for centuries, and you have the conditions that led to the
development of the classical "uta" (also referred to as "tanka" or
"waka"), the thrity-one-syllable form that acts as the foundation
for virtually all poetry written in Japanese between 850 and 1900.
In choosing poems, the compiler has given priority to authors and
works gnerally acknowledged as of great artistic and/or historical
importance by Japanese scholars. For this reason, major poets such
as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Izumi Shikibu, Saigyo, and Matsuo Basho
are particualarly important collections such as Man'yoshu,
Kokinshu, and Shin kokinshu. In addtion, the volume also contains
samplings from genres such as the poetic diary, linked verse,
Chinese forms, and comic verse.
General
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