Series: Companions for the Journey

"Shiki's distinctive vision and direct expression make a tone recognizably his own, conveyed beautifully in these pages' translations. We hear Shiki's haiku as the voice of a friend bringing complex news in a few intimate words. These haiku are drawn from a world that feels close to our own, and they bring our own lives and world closer. Shiki's poems...

These seventy poems are masterpieces from over a thousand years of classical Chinese poetry. Beauty and simplicity meld to convey an astounding landscape with both enchanting details and breathtaking vastness. The poems constitute an anthology, given to Chinese school children as a text to aid their instruction in Mandarin, and to introduce them to China's rich literary history. The poems...