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Title: Zen Poems of China & Japan: The Crane's Bill (An Evergreen Book) by Lucien Stryk, Takashi Ikemoto, Taigan Takayama ISBN: 0-8021-3019-4 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: It's all in the poems!
Comment: THE CRANE'S BILL : Zen Poems of China and Japan. Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto with the assistance of Taigan Takayama, Zen Master. 143 pp. New York : Grove Press, 1973 and Reprinted.
Zen poetry is one of the glories of Zen, and yet few in the West seem to care or even know about it. Though undoubtedly sincere in their efforts to understand Zen, most readers seem drawn to prose treatises or explications or analyses of one sort or another, while overlooking the fact that, as Taigan Takayama expresses it : "Zen detests conceptualization" (page xi). Tenzan Yasuda has expressed the same idea this way : "What expresses cosmic truth in the most direct and concise way - that is the heart of Zen art" (page xxxvii).
The poetry of Zen ranges all the way from the tiny seventeen-syllable haiku of a stupendous poet such as Santoka, which have been beautifully translated by John Stevens (in 'Mountain Tasting : Zen Haiku by Santoka Taneda'), through to the Zen verse treatise, of which the finest example is the Third Patriarch Seng-ts'an's 'Hsin-hsin-ming.' This poem brilliantly captures the essence of Zen in its thirty-one verses, and is a text that deserves to be far better known. Although the present book is devoted to shorter poems, an easily accessible translation of the 'Hsin-hsin-ming' will be found in D. T. Suzuki's 'Manual of Zen Buddhism' ('On Believing in Mind,' pages 76-82).
'Crane's Bill' is a collaborative effort which falls into three parts. First we are given, in a Foreword, Preface, and Introduction, 42 pages of interesting and informative material in which a very persuasive case is made for the fact that we should be reading these poems. Then follow 151 poems on enlightenment, death, and general subjects, drawn from a wide range of Chinese and Japanese writers. The book is rounded out with 48 pages of notes on the poems, though it unfortunately lacks both an index and a conversion table of the Japanized Chinese names
The translations, as might have been expected from the present team, read very well. Here is Poem 1, with my slash marks to indicate line breaks:
"The mountain slopes crawl with lumberjacks, / Axing everything in sight - / Yet crimson flowers / Burn along the stream" (page 5).
Here to provide a comment on Poem 1 is Poem 14:
"Iron will's demanded of / the student of the Way - / It's always on the mind. / Forget all - good, bad. / Suddenly it's yours" (page 10).
Compare this with first verse of the Hsin-hsin-ming, the original Chinese of which may be read as follows:
"To realize the Way is not difficult / If you'd only stop choosing; / Just let go of all of your hate, and love, / And everything will be brilliantly clear."
Do we really need to know more? If you don't believe me, here is Poem 97 from the great Japanese Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253):
"Four and fifty years / I've hung the sky with stars. / Now I leap through - / What shattering!" (page 63).
'Crane's Bill' is an extremely interesting and highly successful collaborative effort which no-one who is seriously interested in Zen can afford to overlook. Because it really is all in the poems!
Rating: 5
Summary: a must read for the expanding mind
Comment: This is in my top ten favorites to read and re-read. I was lucky to have actually find this book laying around, now I feel it has actually found me.
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Title: A Drifting Boat: An Anthology of Chinese Zen Poetry by Jerome P. Seaton, Dennis Maloney ISBN: 1877727377 Publisher: White Pine Press (NY) Pub. Date: 01 June, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain by Hanshan, Red Pine ISBN: 1556591403 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Zen Works of Stonehouse: Poems and Talks of a Fourteenth-Century Chinese Hermit by Qinggong, Ch'Ing-Hung, Red Pine ISBN: 156279101X Publisher: Mercury House Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death by Yoel Hoffman ISBN: 0804831793 Publisher: Tuttle Publishing Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (New Directions Book) by Kenneth Rexroth ISBN: 0811201805 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 June, 1971 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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