Blossom Awakening

ebook The Life and Poetry of Wandering Monk Saigyo

By Saigyo

cover image of Blossom Awakening

Sign up to save your library

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

   Not today

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Download Libby on the App Store Download Libby on Google Play

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:

Library Name Distance
Loading...
Pause, breathe, and savor the quiet beauty of Saigyō, one of Japan's most quintessential poets, in this celebration of nature and Buddhist insight.
Born in the twelfth century during a time of great political upheaval and warfare, Saigyō made the unusual decision in his youth to resign from his respectable post as a guard to the emperor’s family and pursue a life of Buddhist renunciation, wilderness wandering, and poetry. Over the course of his lifetime, he became one of Japan’s most celebrated poets. Today, his spare poems of spiritual longing and aching identification with the natural world continue to inspire fathomless, ineffable emotion in readers all over the world.
With 193 poems on 11 themes like the moon, journeys, mountain abodes, love, and the dreamlike world, Blossom Awakening reveals Saigyō as a spiritual seeker who gave his life to the artist’s path. Translators Peter Levitt and Kazuaki Tanahashi present their English renderings with the original Japanese text and offer commentary that illuminates the political, religious, and literary dimensions of Saigyō’s life and work.
Blossom Awakening