SIMMERING AWAY

Songs From The Kanginshu

 

translated by

 

Yasuhiko Moriguchi and David Jenkins

 

White Pine Press

P.O. Box 236

Buffalo, NY 14201

 

Paper, $14

ISBN: I-893996-49-2

978-893996-49-6

 

 

 

 

The Kanginshu is an anthology of Japanese poetry from the early 16th century. The identity of the original anthologist is uncertain, although he appears to have been a poet of the highest order. The anthology was based on the Chinese classic Book of Songs and, like its predecessor, consisted of 311 poems. Most of them are classified as kouta ( short songs ). As described by the late David Jenkins, the Kanginshu includes all songs that came from the quiet center, whatever their length, songs that convey truth be they songs of the human voice, or those of the babbling streams, the falling leaf, the roaring dragon, or the five thousand books of the Daizo sutra.

The poems chosen by Moriguchi and Jenkins most often address the twists and turns of love, and often love gone wrong, and are accompanied by delightful yet sometimes somber black and white drawings by Michael Hofmann. As selected, the poems remain untitled, delicately separated by white space and Hofmann s illustrations, and they seem to float from one to the other, perhaps best shown by the following excerpt:

The world is

a dream within

a dream within

a dream

 

As Jenkins explains, there is an essential vitality in the Kanginshu from the tension between acceptance of the transience of life and a determination to focus smiling on the here and now. Such transience appears in the following simple lines:

This world is but a leaf

blown by the wind

upon the waves

 

And the determination to make something out of the here and now is demonstrated by this short piece:

Beneath the bridge

the tiny fish

dart to and fro

they too

not wanting

to sleep alone

 

Simmering Away is another exceptional, concise book in the Companions for the Journey Series by White Pine Press. If the poems here are often simple and clear, it s because there are times we need them precisely that way, and it s the highest of artistic achievement to make them so.

#