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Kenneth Rexroth Kenneth Rexroth, what a crotchety belle-lettrist. In an afterword to the Frank Norris novel McTeague, which I just read he says how much he dislikes novels and that only kids and women should read them, but then goes on to say how much he likes McTeague. While reading Rexroth’s cantankerous comments this book of his translations from the Japanese surfaced in my house during a house renovation upheaval. God bless cranky well read farts like Rexroth and major personal library upheavals that spit out old forgotten favorites like One Hundred Poems From The Japanese!

This is a collection of tanka, which are kind of like long haiku, but which predated haiku by centuries. Rexroth much prefers tanka, though he includes a couple pages of haiku at the end for balance and comparison.

Some favorites:

1.
Autumn has come
To the lonely cottage,
Buried in dense hop vines,
Which no one visits.

The Monk Eikei

I like it for its succinct evocation of cozy loneliness.

2.
I go out of the darkness
Onto a road of darkness
Lit only by the far off
Moon on the edge of the mountains.

Lady Izumi Shikibu

I like it because it is a sad movie with gothic touches in my mind.

3.
The hanging raindrops
Have not dried from the needles
Of the fir forest
Before the evening mist
Of Autumn rises.

The Monk Jakuren

I like it because it is a near hallucinatory moment of visual clarity that is then blurred by its own movement of rising melancholy.

4.
As the mists rise in the dawn
From Uji River, one by one,
The stakes of the nets appear,
Stretching far into the shallows.

Fujiwara No Sadayori

I like it because it embodies, line by line, its own unfolding visuals as it simultaneously draws my mind away from itself as it reads.

5.
In the evening
The rice leaves in the garden
Rustle in the autumn wind
That blows through my reed hut.

Minamoto No Tsunenobu

I like it because it also embodies, line by line, its own unfolding visuals and atmosphere. By the last line the breeze itself is blowing through the poem evoking a cozily alert melancholy.

6.
I will come to you
Through the ford at Saho,
The plovers piping about me
As my horse wades
The clear water.

Otomo No Yakamochi

I like it because it is an epic moment (with movement) of heroic beauty.

I do not know how accurate Rexroth’s translations are but they more than fulfill one requirement of great translation - they all are excellent stand-alone poems in English. Rexroth knew how to get that concise utterly resilient imagery into English that is both rock solid and delicate. Bravo old fart!