This extraordinary collection of poems--covering thirty centuries of poetry from around the world--celebrates the erotic spirit in all its forms, from the passion of sexual desire to the intense longing for spiritual union. Beginning with anonymous Egyptian love songs from the fifteenth century BCE and continuing up to today's finest poets, the book draws on a broad range of cultural and spiritual traditions, including ancient Greek and Roman erotic poems, ecstatic Sufi songs, Chinese elegies for lost lovers, and bawdy English satires. Many of the poems are presented here in new translations by the editor, Sam Hamill, one of America's premier poet translators.

Influenced by the Chinese and Japanese masters, Hamill's "Dumb Luck "affirms his ability to give us back the world and all its vicissitudes. Here you will find Zen fables, elegies and haiku, bluesy riffs, and poems that celebrate births, marriages, the liberating exile of the poet, as well as verses that present the dumb luck that has peppered the poet's life.

Sam Hamill is the author of a dozen volumes of original poetry, as well as three collections of essays. He is the Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press, director of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, and contributing editor at "The American Poetry Review."

"Carruth is] one of the lasting literary signatures of our time."--"Library Journal" (starred review)

"Carruth...contains multitudes."--"Booklist" (starred review)

"Carruth is a people's poet... a virtuoso of form."--"The Nation"

This "portable Carruth" gathers new poems with the essential works from a major American poet. Included are lyrics, short narratives, comic, meditative, and erotic poems that engage politics, music, rural poverty, and the cultural responsibility of artists. As Sam Hamill writes in the introduction:

"Carruth's great body of work is a world... Like the jazz he so loves, his poetry ranges from the formal to the spontaneous, from local vernacular to righteous oratory, from beautiful complexity to elegant understatement."

From "A Few Dilapidated Arias"

""Our crumbling civilization"-a phrase I have used often
during recent years, in letters to friends, even in
words for public print. And what does it mean? "Can"
a civilization crumble? At once appears the image
of an old slice of bread, stale and hard, green with mold,
shaped roughly like the northeastern United States, years
old or more, so hard and foul that even my pal Maxie,
the shepherd/husky cross who eats everything, won't
touch it. And it is crumbling, turning literally into
crumbs, as the millions of infinitesimal internal connecting
fibers sever and loosen. The dust trickles and seeps away."

Hayden Carruth, a longtime resident of Vermont, currently lives in upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. His many honors include the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Estonia's Jaan Kaplinski (1941-2021) was one of Europe's major poets, and one of his country's best-known writers and cultural figures. He was a member of the new post-Revolution Estonian parliament in 1992-95 and his essays on cultural transition and the challenges of globalisation are published across the Baltic region. This selection includes work previously unpublished in English as well as poems drawn from all four of his previous UK collections: The Same Sea in Us All, The Wandering Border, Through the Forest and Evening Brings Everything Back.

Part poetry, part paradox, always stirring and profound, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching has been inspiring readers since it was written over two thousand years ago. This masterpiece is also one of the most frequently translated books in all of history, in part because the multiple meanings of the Chinese characters make it impossible to translate into a Western language in a strictly literal way. For this reason, many translations are either too loosely interpretive or are too overloaded with notes, thereby losing the clarity of the terse poetry found in the original Chinese.
The extraordinary strength of Sam Hamill's translation is that it has captured the poetry of Lao Tzu's original without sacrificing the resonance of the text's many meanings and possible interpretations. The result is a beautiful and deeply meditative rendering, one that is a delight to read over and over again.
Accompanying Sam Hamill's translation are seventeen Chinese characters brushed by one of the great masters of calligraphy, Kazuaki Tanahashi. Hamill provides a comment for each character, giving the reader a fuller sense of the richness of the original text and insight into the process of translation itself.

A beautiful translation of one of the most-loved classics of Japanese literature.

Bash (1644-1694)--a great luminary of Asian literature who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty--is renowned in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary of linked prose and haiku recounting his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan. This edition features a masterful translation of this celebrated work. It also includes an insightful introduction by translator Sam Hamill detailing Bash 's life and the art of haiku, three other important works by Bash --Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones, The Knapsack Notebook, and Sarashina Travelogue--and two hundred and fifty of his finest haiku, making this the most complete single-volume collection of Bash 's writings.

This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series.

The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

Quintessential classical Japanese haiku - selected and translated by one of America's premier poet-translators - now available in a pocket edition. In this collection of haiku, translator Sam Hamill has compiled the best from the tradition, spanning the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, with particular focus on the three great masters: Bash, Buson, and Issa. Based on images from nature, the poems address the themes of joy, temporality, beauty, wonder, loneliness, and loss.

Sam Hamill is that rare figure whose life is continually in dialogue with the rich and diverse tradition of poetry, whether that dialogue takes the form of translating the work of a poet long dead, writing a poem in celebration of the work of a contemporary poet, or musing on what it means to be a poet himself. A true poet's poet--and also the founding editor of Copper Canyon Press, one of the most influential publishers of poetry today--Hamill has been part of America's poetry scene for decades and has won numerous prizes and awards for his work. This collection presents the best of Hamill's work from his thirteen books of original poetry and from his numerous critically acclaimed works of translation, as well as a number of new, previously unpublished poems.

A collection of classical Japanese haiku selected and translated by one of America's premier poet-translators.

Haiku is one of the most popular and widely recognized poetic forms in the world due to its brevity, emotion, and astounding ability to capture the unique experience of a single moment. This collection, beautifully translated by Sam Hamill, compiles over two hundred haiku from classic Japanese literature written by masters of the genre like Bashō, Buson, and Issa. Based on images from nature, these poems express themes of joy, temporality, beauty, wonder, loneliness, and loss, inviting the reader to participate in the authentic experiences of these poets.

A Zen poem is nothing other than an expression of the enlightened mind, a handful of simple words that disappear beneath the moment of insight to which it bears witness. Poetry has been an essential aid to Zen Buddhist practice from the dawn of Zen--and Zen has also had a profound influence on the secular poetry of the countries in which it has flourished. Here, two of America's most renowned poets and translators provide an overview of Zen poetry from China and Japan in all its rich variety, from the earliest days to the twentieth century. Included are works by Lao Tzu, Han Shan, Li Po, Dogen Kigen, Saigyo, Basho, Chiao Jan, Yuan Mei, Ryokan, and many others. Hamill and Seaton provide illuminating introductions to the Chinese and Japanese sections that set the poets and their work in historical and philosophical context. Short biographies of the poets are also included.

The "Chuang Tzu " has been translated into English numerous times, but never with the freshness, accessibility, and accuracy of this remarkable rendering. Here the immediacy of Chuang Tzu's language is restored in a idiom that is both completely fresh and true to the original text. This unique collaboration between one of America's premier poet-translators and a leading Chinese scholar presents the so-called "Inner Chapters" of the text, along with important selections from other chapters thought to have been written by Chuang Tzu's disciples.

One of the most famous Japanese writers of the 20th century, Yosano Akiko is the author of more than 75 books. Although probably best known for her exquisite erotic poetry, Akiko's work also championed the causes of feminism, pacifism, and social reform. "River of Stars" is her first book presenting the full breadth of her poetic vision. Illustrations.