Ariake: Poems of Love and Longing by the Women Courtiers of Ancient Japan

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Summary: Love - longings and laments.
Review: Ah, the bewitching age of dynasties never fails to fascinate with the lovely and lyrical verses of longing...These poems have that passionate elegance - a spark that is about to burst into flame. The collages make for a truly exquisite gift. Read this with a lover - or a potential lover! Try writing your own! Like desire itself, I found myself wanting more.

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Summary: Companion to Song of the Kisaeng
Review: Ariake is (inadvertantly) a companion volume to Song of the Kisaeng - a wonderful book of Korean courtesan poetry. I highly recommend reading both as the interplay of the differing sensibilities enhances the value of each.

Ariake in its own right is a beautiful book ... once I got past the inside covers of pink - the collage illustrations by Grant have a wonderful interplay with the text, repeating themes with a Japanese feel. The poetry is excellent and well translated. They retain a simple language with proscribed conceits while working as poetry in English.

An example: "In the blackberry / Night I saw you one last time, / But I let you go / Without meeting you at dawn, / And now I have learned regret."

For the technically inclined, the poems are wakas (31 syllable poems 5-7-5-7-7).

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Summary: A beautifully crafted compilation
Review: Ariake is a most wonderful book to read over and over again. Rae Grant's sensitive collages, which combine symbolic images and unusual textures, perfectly complement the brief but emotionally charged poems of court ladies, some named and some anonymous, in Heian Japan. This book is a goldmine of poignant imagery from a thousand years ago; but it can still elicit of the modern reader, perhaps, the same urgent emotions. I am repeatedly amazed by the freshness of the words. What marvelous translators must have worked on these poems! For the historically minded, Liza Dalby beautifully and concisely introduces the era and the circumstances of women during the Heian period.

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Summary: Only half the spectrum
Review: As a light reading coffee table book, or perhaps as a gift for that someone (personally, I think this would work well for men or women), this book is a rare hit in a sea of duds. The introduction by Liza Dalby is fluid, vivid, and only adds to the illustraitions and poems themselves (despite breezing over and making deliberate exadurations of several points, but his has become something of her trademark it seems).

The problem with this book is not exactly what it had as what it doesn't. Although, yes, the title does say "Poems of Love and Longing by the Women Courtiers of Ancient Japan", there was just as much (probably more surviving) poems written by men which express, although not in the same way, just as much passion as the women of the time. Not only that, but there are any number of poems written by men from a woman's perspective (the monk Sosei's in the Hyakunin Isshu is one of the more famous). Not only that, but in many cases in the imperial anthologies the translations are take from there are numerous "conversational poems" between lovers that could have been included without a hitch. I fear this book gives too much the impression that it was only the "great women of the past" who were responsible for expressing such emotion. I doubt, though, that anyone is looking to any time soon put together a book of men's love poetry from the same era.

Another thing that would have been nice to know is who selected the poems, and whether there was any rhyme or reason to the selection. Looking back over where the poems were originally taken from (not exclusively the Heian period, mind you. Some come from a bit before and a bit after), it only seems like a selection from other people's translations, particularly from the love section of imperial anthologies. Not that this is bad, but it could be construed as being a bit lax. That, or the collector (not author) was incapable of making any new translations themselves. This isn't exactly a point to complain about, since books like this help to spread at least some awareness of Japanese literature. Still, using the knowledge that the love section of the anthologies were set out to tell the story of lovers, from their first meeting untill their final parting, might have made for a more interesting read.

Coming this far, it sounds like I hope no other books along these lines surface. Quite the opposite. I hope to see many more in the days and years to come. The literature of Japan, particularly its ancient and medieval poetry, are all too often overlooked because they have nothing visibly to do with Zen or samurai. In particular, the fact that Japan up to its modern era had a long history of love poetry, fiction, and even "self-help" readers, is all but unknown beyond Japan's boarders.

So, for anyone looking for a Valentine's Day or Sweetest's Day (anyone still doing this?) gift, you may have just found it. For those looking for something more complete in the way of literature, try the sources for the poems here-in, such as McCullough's Kokin-Wakashu or, better yet, Cranston's A Waka Anthology.

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Summary: What a beautiful book!
Review: I bought this from Amazon as a present for Mother's Day, and it just arrived -- what an absolutely stunning book! It looks handmade, the collages are beautiful, the poems strong and elemental and touching -- extremely cool, the kind of book you keep by the bedside. Somebody obviously took a great deal of care.

The heart of the thing, though, are the poems themselves, which are wistful, sensual, melancholy, ecstatic -- amazing what can be said so thoughtfully in five short lines, and amazing, too, the universality of emotion expressed by these women centuries ago.

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Summary: Each word burns flame-bright...
Review: Oh, sisters of my heart, how I have longed to hear your voices. What a delight to find works from Japanese women poets. If you've already read Jane Hirshfield's "The Ink Dark Moon" and loved it, I know you'll like "Erotic Spirit: An Anthology of Poems of Sensuality, Love, and Longing" Edited by Sam Hamill.

Rating:
Summary: Each word burns flame-bright...
Review: Oh, sisters of my heart, how I have longed to hear your voices. What a delight to find works from Japanese women poets. If you've already read Jane Hirshfield's "The Ink Dark Moon" and loved it, I know you'll like "Erotic Spirit: An Anthology of Poems of Sensuality, Love, and Longing" Edited by Sam Hamill.