tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post424121289641830927..comments2024-03-28T12:59:41.910-04:00Comments on NeverEnding Story: A Room of My Own: The Road Less TraveledChen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐http://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-86615328510287919012013-04-05T08:15:49.980-04:002013-04-05T08:15:49.980-04:00Basho said to [his favorite disciple Kyoroku] as [...Basho said to [his favorite disciple Kyoroku] as [they] departed, "My poetry is like a stove in the summer or a fan in winter. It runs against the popular tastes and has no practical use. But there is much that is affecting even in the poems of Toshinari and Saigyo that were lightly tossed off. Didn't the retired Emperor Go-Toba say of their poetry that it contained truth tinged with sorrow? Take strength from his words and follow unswervingly the narrow thread of the Way of Poetry.Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. That is what Kukai wrote, and it is true of haikai poetry as well."<br /><br />For more information, see Yoshiko Kurata Dykstra, Sources of Japanese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600. Volume 1, p.351-2.<br />Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐https://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.com