Li Po, “Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain”
Spirituality wraps itself in ridiculous guises. Gurus atop mountains; sayings paradoxical to the point of nonsense; otherworldly or overblown claims; practice s...
Category: poetry
Emily Dickinson, “My River runs to thee” (162) & “Distance — is not the Realm of Fox” (1155)
Dickinson, utterly unshy about her desires, introduces a problem for those of us reading her. On the one hand, her frankness about sex is refreshing after so mu...
Izumi Shikibu, “Although the wind…”
The moon in Japanese poetry is always the moon. Hirshfield begins a brief, personal interpretation of the poem below with this cryptic, lovely sentence. We̵...
Isabella Mori, “A Bagful of Haiku”
A Bagful of Haiku: 87 Imperfections (available on Amazon) by Isabella Mori Vancouver: Isabella Mori (2017) Toward the end of the beginning of A Bagful of Haiku:...
Jane Hirshfield, “Late Prayer”
Moonlight fell on the lake, and I felt myself drawn to the waves covered by darkness, still visible, with a rich, silky texture of various shades of black. They...