Reviews for The City Lights Pocket poets series

The average rating for The City Lights Pocket poets series based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-14 00:00:00 Kylinn Leiby A long time ago I read a book review in the newspaper. It was about a travel book in which the author retraced the footsteps of Matsuo Basho's journey through seventeenth century Japan told in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Naturally I never did get my hands on the modern book but at my local library there was the penguin translation of Basho's book. no sooner had the spring mist begun to rise over the field than I wanted to be on the road again to cross the barrier-gate of Shirakawa in due time. The gods seemed to have possessed my soul and turned it inside out, and roadside images seemed to invite me from every corner, so that it was impossible for me to stay idle at home. Even while I was getting ready...I was already dreaming of the full moon rising over the islands of Matsushima. It is a very charming book. The translation contains five travel sketches. Deep Road to the Narrow North is the longest at forty-six printed pages. Basho aimed to combine poetry and prose, he had a reputation as a poet and was accompanied at different stages by, well, I suppose wandering apprentice poets attempting to hone their craft by hanging about with a mastercraftsman, some notable wordsmith or other. Some of their poems are included too. For Basho the landscape is rich in culture: It was by a singular stroke of genius that an ancient writer pointed out that the autumn was the best season to visit this beach, for it seemed to me that the scene excelled in loneliness and isolation at that season. It was, on the other hand, an incurable folly of mine to think that, had I come here in autumn, I would have had a greater poetic success, for that only proved the poverty of my mind. There are famous views, historical places, mountains, bays, flowers, trees about which poems have been written. Basho accompanied by apprentices stops at these places, met up with others and they aim to write poems by the moonlight. The group of poets waiting in a spinney on a cloudy night watching for the moon to rise over the trees in order to compose verse amuses me still. The tone is light, fresh and inviting. There is the type of hunger that you can feel in the legs to see distant places. It reminds me oddly of Heinrich Heine in the Harz or up by the North Sea. I also learnt that Japanese horses are trustworthy. Once Basho borrows one from a farmer and sends it back with some money tied to the saddle. In my own country a horse with some money would be straight down to the fair, frolicking with the fillies or casting a glad eye at the stallions depending on its inclinations. The journeys are filled with days of rain, floods and difficult passes through mountains requiring the author to hire a guide: My guide congratulated me by saying that I was indeed fortunate to have crossed the mountains in safety, for accidents of some sort had always happened to him on past trips. The implication to my mind is that he wasn't a particularly good guide. But already such tourism as there was in seventeenth century Japan was coming into conflict with the way of life of the locals: According to the child who acted as a self-appointed, this stone was once on the top of a mountain, but the travellers who came to see it did so much harm to the crops that the farmers thought it a nuisance and thrust it down into the valley. Basho has a religious motivation for his travels, abandoning his house and his possessions is a renunciation of earthly things. He wears at one point the robes of a Buddhist priest but tells us he is perceived like a bat - sometimes as a mouse and sometimes as a bird. Perhaps there is a particular significance to some of the places he visits, his choice of words or his meetings with people, but I leave any commentary to those who know about such things. There is the joy in this book of setting out with just a few things in a backpack; two coats, one for rain one for cold and some writing materials It was early in October when the sky was terribly uncertain that I decided to set out on a journey. I could not help feeling vague misgivings about the future of my journey, as I watched the fallen leaves of autumn being carried away by the wind.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-19 00:00:00 Cathy Poe Acknowledgements Introduction, by Nobuyuki Yuasa --The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton --A Visit to the Kashima Shrine --The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel --A Visit to Sarashina Village --The Narrow Road to the Deep North Maps Notes