I cut my literary teeth on Alan Ginsberg, jack Kerouac, Hemingway and bukowski. I used to spend a long time writing and reading poetry and I do think it left big impacts on my literary sensibilities. What a precious memento from your bachan. What form were the poetry in?
It's a collection of tanka. She joined a tanka club run by a professional poet when she was in her 40s, and would write a few (not sure how many) every month. Not exactly sure when she stopped, but that was going on for decades.
Very cool. I never read much Japanese Poetry, due to the difficulty posed by Kanji and the strict stanzas. I read quite a bit of Korean poetry and translated some (Han Ha Oon the leper and Ko Eun the Korean poet laureate).
I was fascinated by the relationship between Soseki the novelist and Shiki the poet. Good Poetry is truly timeless.
Rumi is also quite timeless if you are interested in religious or romantic poetry.
I also haven't read enough Japanese poetry to recommend anything with confidence, but the best-known recent poet in Japan, Tanikawa Shuntarō (I just found out he died last year), I think has a lot of pretty accessible poems, and they're not in the strict forms like tanka or haiku.
Another resonant post for me.
I cut my literary teeth on Alan Ginsberg, jack Kerouac, Hemingway and bukowski. I used to spend a long time writing and reading poetry and I do think it left big impacts on my literary sensibilities. What a precious memento from your bachan. What form were the poetry in?
It's a collection of tanka. She joined a tanka club run by a professional poet when she was in her 40s, and would write a few (not sure how many) every month. Not exactly sure when she stopped, but that was going on for decades.
Very cool. I never read much Japanese Poetry, due to the difficulty posed by Kanji and the strict stanzas. I read quite a bit of Korean poetry and translated some (Han Ha Oon the leper and Ko Eun the Korean poet laureate).
I was fascinated by the relationship between Soseki the novelist and Shiki the poet. Good Poetry is truly timeless.
Rumi is also quite timeless if you are interested in religious or romantic poetry.
I also haven't read enough Japanese poetry to recommend anything with confidence, but the best-known recent poet in Japan, Tanikawa Shuntarō (I just found out he died last year), I think has a lot of pretty accessible poems, and they're not in the strict forms like tanka or haiku.