Customer Reviews

Crow With No Mouth (Old Edition)

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"Only one koan matters," Ikkyu writes, "you" (p. 67). "Believe in the man facing you now" (p. 21). While meditating on a boat when he was 27, Ikkyu Sojun--also known as "Crazy Cloud" (1394-1482), was enlightened when he heard a crow call (p. 9). As a Zen Master, he was considered sort of an eccentric rake (p. 13), and he never pretended to be much else. He loved sake. He loved women. "The crow's caw was ok," he writes (p. 58), but "a woman is enlightenment" (p. 64). Ikkyu scandalized his Zen community, and his poetry will offend many readers today as well. "Look me up if you want to," he writes, "in the bar whorehouse fish market" (p. 40).

These poems are "frank, naked, sincere" (p. 15), and full of vivid imagery of "erotic renewal" (p. 13). It's enough to say for purposes of this review, Ikkyu lives "in a shack on the edge of whorehouse row" (p. 40). These are the poems of a poet who is "all there" (p. 15), and fully present on his "long pure beautiful road of pain/ and the beauty of death and no pain" (p. 24), whether he is watching his four-year-old daughter dance--"I can't break free of her" (p. 60), watching the "snow moon tangled among black flowers" (p. 39), or "shuttling between whorehouse and bar" (p. 47). Question "flattery success money," he writes (p. 22). "This city these people where I live still are impossible" (p. 30). "Sing until you have no throat then words come by themselves" (p. 55).

I'm not qualified to comment on Stephen Berg's translation of Ikkyu's poems, but I can tell you this book is certainly something to crow about!

G. Merritt

Ikkyu wrote his verses in a four line form which has been reworked into couplets by Stephen Berg. It is important to remember that these are version by Stephen Berg not careful translations from the original - as reworkings often are the most accessible translations.

Ikkyu was not a typical Zen master - the monkish disciplines of celebacy and sobriety were not in his repetoire. While this makes him an oddity, it reinforces the ideal that one who is enlightened is one who is free. This freedom (often seen as indifference or non-clinging) is voiced in this poem "Ikkyu this body isn't yours I say to myself / wherever I am I'm there". His freedom from the disciplines is shown in poems that are explicitly sexual not merely erotic. A very tame example: "don't hesitate get laid thaat's wisdom / sitting around chanting what crap".

Ikkyu is definately a poet that students or would-be students of Zen should read ... in fact, we all should read it for the sheer fun and beauty of it.

This is classic haiku from the 15th century zen master Ikkyu. Ikkyu was a headmaster at Daitokuji before renouncing the hipocritical attitudes of the monks. Ikkyu was far too hearty and robust to endure that fate. He was not afraid to toss a few obscenities into his writing. This is not your Mothers haiku. Ikkyu cussed and swore and ignored the authorities. This collection gives one a generous sampling of his haiku. This is a neglected genius that often is overlooked in favor of Basho and Ryokan. Those two are also brilliant but Ikkyu is the wild man of the group. He is Rimbaud blaspheming, Whitman yowling a barbaric yawp and Bukowksi drunk on the floor in one package. Its a great introductory collection to haiku and japanese poetry in general.

Ikkyu is perhaps the most like "normal" humans by any accounting of a Zen master I've encountered in print. One can relate to this guy. Some of his poems are like Michael Jordan putting up a final second shot and touching nothing but net. I wasn't sure I would like his poetry since I'm not that big a poetry fan but this is the kind of book to take on a long run down the Grand Canyon or somewhere you might crave inspiration when space is at a premium.

I can't speak about the translation though it makes compelling poetry in English, which can be sure Ikkyu would have liked. I think punctuation would have helped, since that is how we here in the West have learned to read, but the lack of it makes you focus, so maybe the lack of it is a good thing. Anyway, he obeyed Dr. Johnson's injunction: "Relieve your mind of cant" without ever having heard it. He was a real man searching for the real thing and this enabled him to put aside the requirements others had encased Zen in, the way people always do. The poems derive from direct contacts with reality: no philosophy, no program, no you, no me.

It is hard to believe this erotic poetry was written by a Japanese Zen Buddhist. Reading these short haikus reinforces that human contact is natural no matter our beliefs, backgrounds or religion. Beautiful reading!

If you're looking for pretty, nature, Haiku-esque poetry, then this might not be for you. Many of these are graphic sexual depictions. Many have four letter words. Ikkyu, aka Crazy Cloud-- Zen Monk, Enlightened One, Patron of Whorehouses, Virile and Active into Old Age.

But don't think these are just sex poems. These are poems built of a version of primary colors: light, dark, mountains and wind.

There's a Whitmanesque Bullheadedness and Joy of Life to many of these short poems (most 2 lines long, rocking back and forth in their sliding images and rhythms) but you don't get the tongue-in-your-ear feeling that comes with reading Leaves of Grass.

Whether he's telling you about burying his pet sparrow or going down on a woman in the kitchen as she cooks, Ikkyu rewards the reader again and again.

hands down one of my top 3 "desert island" books. i don't even know what the other two would be, but berg's translations - ikkyu's work - man...these can - without fail - render the reader speechless, at least one or two times in a reading...easily.