A fresh translation of the classical Buddhist poetry of Saigyo, whose aesthetics of nature, love, and sorrow came to epitomize the Japanese poetic tradition.

Saigyo, the Buddhist name of Fujiwara no Norikiyo (1118-1190), is one of Japan's most famous and beloved poets. He was a recluse monk who spent much of his life wandering and seeking after the Buddhist way. Combining his love of poetry with his spiritual evolution, he produced beautiful, lyrical lines infused with a Buddhist perception of the world.

Gazing at the Moon presents over one hundred of Saigyo's tanka--traditional 31-syllable poems--newly rendered into English by renowned translator Meredith McKinney. This selection of poems conveys Saigyo's story of Buddhist awakening, reclusion, seeking, enlightenment, and death, embodying the Japanese aesthetic ideal of mono no aware--to be moved by sorrow in witnessing the ephemeral world.
Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude, Saigyo, Shambhala, Paperback, 160 pp, $16.65

Meredith McKinney (translator) is an award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese literature, whose translations include Sei Shonagon's eleventh-century classic The Pillow Book, and Kokoro and Kusamakura by the early modern novelist Natsume Soseki. After living and teaching for around 20 years in Japan, she returned to Australia in 1998 and now lives near the small town of Braidwood, in southeastern New South Wales. She is currently an honorary associate professor at the Japan Centre, Australian National University.