Companions for the Journey is a series showcasing inspirational work by well-known writers in a small-book format designed to be carried along your journey through life.
I have enjoyed reading these books and blogged about some of them in this series before. This spring three new titles were issued and I found all three to be enjoyable.
#18 Breaking the Willow: Poems of Parting, Exile and Separation & Reunion
Breaking the Willow is an anthology of Chinese poets named for the custom to break a willow twig and present it to a departing friend. Many poems of sorrow and loss are mirrored as the reader reflects. There are many beautiful one-liners in this little jewel:
“Glorious moon hanging in mid-sky, but who looks?”
#19 Between the Floating Mist: Poems of Ryōkan (1758-1831)
This selection of Ryōkan’s poetry is followed by an exchange of poetry in sequence between Teishin and Ryōkan. I found the following exchange an adequate representation:
.
Teishin
Distant waves
seem to come,
seem to go . . .
Ryōkan
Clear and bright
your words and understanding.
#20 Mountain tasting: Haiku and Journals of Santoka Teneda (1882-1940)
Santoka Teneda is a “new Haiku movement” poet representing the Zen qualities of simplicity, solitude and impermanence conveyed in a modern setting through haiku. Teneda walked around pre-WWII Japan, living simply and writing sensitive poems. I enjoyed this collection the most of the three. I end this blog with two favorite haiku.
(For fun) #137
Nonchalantly urinating
by the road,
soaking the young weeds.
(For thought) # 346
The sound of waves–
and distant, nonclose:
how much of my life remains.
I also wrote an entry a while back on another volume in the Companion Series. Click here to read about Lotus Moon: Japanese poet, Rengetsu (1791-1875), was the illegitimate offspring of a high-ranking Samurai and a young geisha . . . Keeping few possessions she likened herself to a “drifting cloud.”
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