Zen Poems of China and Japan

The Crane's Bill

“Excellent . . . A fine introduction to Chinese and Japanese Zen poetry for all readers” from the editors of Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter (Choice).

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.”

“One of the most intimate and dynamic books yet published on Zen.” —Sanford Goldstein, Arizona Quarterly