Crow with No Mouth

Ikkyū Sōjun,Stephen Berg, trans.

An eccentric classic of Zen poetry. When Zen master Ikkyū Sōjun (1394-1481) was appointed headmaster of the great temple at Kyoto, he lasted nine days before denouncing the rampant hypocrisy he saw among the monks there. He in turn invited them to look for him in the sake parlors of the Pleasure Quarters. A Zen monk-poet-calligrapher-musician, he dared to write about the joys of erotic love, along with more traditional Zen themes. He was a rebel genius who dared to defy authority and despised corruption. Although he lived during times plagued by war, famine, rioting, and religious upheaval, his writing and music prevailed, influencing Japanese culture to this day. His work is translated here by poet Stephen Berg.

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ISBN: 9781556591525

Format: Paperback

Excerpt from “Crow with No Mouth”

even before trees rocks I was nothing
when I’m dead nowhere I’ll be nothing

 

 

all the bad things I do will go up in smoke
and so will I

 

 

if there’s nowhere to rest at the end
how can I get lost on the way?

 

 

this ink painting of wind blowing through pines
who hears it?

About the Author

Zen master Ikkyū Sojūn (1394–481) was Japanese monk-poet-calligrapher-musician who celebrated erotic love and attained satori upon hearing a crow call. Appointed headmaster at Kaitokuji, the great temple in Kyoto, he lasted nine days before denouncing the rampant hypocrisy among the monks. He invited them to look for him in the sake parlors of the Pleasure Quarter.

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About the Translator

Stephen Berg (1934–2014) was the founder and co-editor of The American Poetry Review and the editor, with Robert Mezey, of the highly acclaimed Naked Poetry anthologies. He was the author of numerous collections of poetry and translations and received the Frank O’Hara Prize, a Columbia University Translation Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Pew, Rockefeller, and Dietrich foundations, as well as from the National Endowment for the Arts. He taught at Princeton and Haverford, and was a professor of humanities …

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Reviews

“Ikkyū scandalized the Zen community of his day and is likely to scandalize some readers even now—his short poems are simultaneously bawdy, abrupt, vulgar, and reverential… It is impossible not to love the velocity and variety of his verse.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

“Stephen Berg is exactly the right poet to have translated these poems.” —Hayden Carruth, Hudson Review

“A deeply sensual man, Ikkyū had little patience for the fussiness of monastic life and ritual… What is especially appealing about Ikkyū’s poetry is the way his sensuality infuses his Zen sensibility.” —American Book Review