Lucien Stryk - Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter

Zen Poetry

BOOKS BY LUCIEN STRYK

Taproot

The Trespasser

Zen: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews

Notes for a Guidebook

Heartland: Poets of the Midwest

World of the Buddha: An Introduction to Buddhist Literature

The Pit and Other Poems

Afterimages: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi

Twelve Death Poems of the Chinese Zen Masters

Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Cranes Bill

Awakening

Heartland II: Poets of the Midwest

Three Zen Poems

Selected Poems

Haiku of the Japanese Masters

The Duckweed Way: Haiku oflssa

The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry

The Duckpond

Prairie Voices: Poets of Illinois

Zen Poems

Encounter with Zen: Writings on Poetry and Zen

Cherries

Bird of Time: Haiku of Basho

Willows

Collected Poems 19531983

On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho

Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi

Bells of Lombardy

Of Pen and Ink and Paper Scraps

The Dumpling Field: Haiku of lssa

The Gift of Great Poetry

Cage of Fireflies: Modern Japanese Haiku

Zen, Poetry, the Art of Lucien Stryk (edited by Susan Porterfield)

The Awakened Self: Encounters with Zen

Let the Spring Breeze Enter

Edited and translated by

Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto

With an Introduction and Afterword by

Lucien Stryk

Copyright 1995 by Lucien Stryk

Preface, Introduction, and Afterword copyright Lucien Stryk, 1977, 1995
A Note on the Translation copyright Takashi Ikemoto, 1977, 1995
The poems in Part Two, Poems of the Japanese Zen Masters, are from Zen: Poems,
Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews, translations copyright Lucien Stryk and
Takashi Ikemoto, 1963, 1965, published by Doubleday & Co.
All remaining translations copyright Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto, 1977, 1995

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote
brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to
photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to
obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to
Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

An earlier, shorter version of this book was published in Great Britain in 1977 by
Swallow Press.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zen poetry: let the spring breeze enter / edited and translated by

Lucien Stryk, Takashi Ikemoto; with an introduction and afterword

by Lucien Stryk.

Rev. and enl. ed. of: The penguin book of Zen poetry. 1977

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9824-2

1. Zen poetryTranslations into English. 2. HaikuTranslations

into English. 3. Japanese poetryTranslations into English.

4. Chinese poetryTranslations into English. I. Stryk, Lucien.

II. Ikemoto, Takashi, 1906. III. Penguin book of Zen poetry.

PL782.E3Z39 1995 895.610080922943dc20 94-15818

Design by Laura Hammond Hough

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

To the memory of my cousin Stephen Ullmann

LUCIEN STRYK

To the memory of my beloved brother Yukio

TAKASHI IKEMOTO

Thanks are due to the following for permission to reprint: American Poetry Review, Bleb, Chariton Review, Chicago Review, Harbinger, Las Americas Review, Loon, Mr Cogito, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Mountain Path, New Letters, Northwest Review, Patmos Press (from the bell of transience), Prairie Schooner, Rapport, Rook Press (from Haiku of the Japanese Masters and The Duckweed Way), Sceptre Press (from Three Zen Poems), Swallow Press (from Selected Poems by Lucien Stryk), Thistle.

Part One
CHINESE POEMS OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND DEATH

Part Two
POEMS OF THE JAPANESE ZEN MASTERS

Part Three
JAPANESE HAIKU

Part Four
SHINKICHI TAKAHASHI, CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE MASTER

Afterword
DEATH OF A ZEN POET: SHINKICHI TAKAHASHI

The temple, reached by a narrow mountain path five miles from the bus stop, was in one of the most beautiful districts of Japan. Surrounded by blazing maples, it appeared to have been rooted there for centuries. To its right was a kiln with a batch of fresh-fired pots, to its left a large vegetable garden where a priest bent, giving full attention to a radish patch. He greeted me warmly and at once asked me to stay the night. Talk would wait till evening, after his meeting with parishionersfarmers, woodsmento discuss a coming festival. Each, I noticed, brought an offeringfruit, eggs, chestnuts. That time I came with nothing. Twenty years later I brought a book of Zen poems, one of a number Id translated since that first inspiring meeting.

Poetry had always been part of my life, and my interest in Zen poetry began as the result of that first visit. While teaching in Niigata, Id been moved by a show of ceramics, calligraphy and haiku poems, and Id asked a friend to take me to see the artist. The evening of my visit I discovered that the priests life was devoted equally to parish, ceramics and poetry. He spoke with love of haiku poetsBasho, Issaand mentioned great Zen masters who excelled in poetryDogen, Bunan, Hakuin, names unfamiliar to me.

I was intrigued when he compared their work to certain Western poets (he especially admired a particular passage from Whitman, quoted here near the end of the Introduction), and I resolved to learn something of Zen poetry. He was wonderfully impressive then, and I found him even more so now, this priest-artist content with earth, pots and poems, seeking no praise of the world, his deepest care the people around him. I have owed him all these years a debt of gratitude, both for my feelings about Zen and for the lesson that one should make the most of the earth under ones feet, whether Japan or midland America, which have stemmed in large measure from our meeting.

My second lectureship in Japan, some years after that visit, was in Yamaguchi, the Kyoto of the West. There, at the Joei Temple, where the great painter Sesshu had served as priest in the fifteenth century, came another meeting which would leave its mark. Takashi Ikemoto, a colleague at the university, and I were interviewing the master of the temple for what later became our first volume of translation from Zen literature. I said things about the rock garden behind the templelaid down by Sesshu and surely one of the finest in Japanwhich struck the master as shallow. He patiently explained that in order to grasp the meaning of so great a work of Zen, I would have to meditate, experience the garden with my being. I was intrigued and humbled. Familiar, through translating the literature, with the ways of Zen masters, I accepted his reproval as challenge. Thus I began a sequence of poems on Sesshus garden, a discovering of things which made possible not only a leap into a truer poetry of my own but also a more effective rendering of Zen poems.