Customer Reviews

Between the Floating Mist (Springhouse Editions)

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Between the floating Mist is great little book for my world of "muchness". When I need to have a time out and allow my blood pressure to return to the green zone, Ryokans' poems bring my mind back to the center. Medication may still be needed for the body, but these poems are great for the spirit.

This little book captures the essence of Ryokan, with a few Chinese poems, some Japanese tanka - and finally "Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf," poems exchanged between the aging Ryokan and Teishin, a nun forty years his junior.

I love the immediacy of these poems. You won't catch Ryokan "expounding on the five stages and the eight categories." He's always off somewhere listening to "the voice of the water under rocks." Whether playing ball with some kids, picking violets or missing his friends, he's always a charmer.

Although he took the name Daigu (Great Fool), Ryokan was qualified by his training to head up a temple. Instead he wandered around as a cloud and water monk and then lived alone in a mountain hut till he got too old to rough it anymore.

But maybe you know all about Ryokan and just want a review of this collection. Well it's small, but a nice taste of his work. The introduction is perfect, a concise summary of his life and worldview.

I read this book to recover my spirits, which had been dampened by a fat boring novel. It worked beautifully.