Masaoka Shiki Selected Poems
- List Price: $54.50
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
- Publish date: 03/01/1998
Burton Watson's excellent introduction explores the course of Shiki's life: his poverty-stricken childhood, his early love for literature, his education, and his work as both a haiku editor for the newspaper Nippon and a correspondent during the Sino-Japanese war. Watson details Shiki's long struggle with tuberculosis and its poignant expression in his poetry. Confined to bed for months before his death, Shiki continued to devote his energies to literary pursuits: writing poems and critical essays, and joining with friends and followers who gathered in his sickroom to discuss literature. He died a few weeks before his thirty-fifth birthday. These poems -- more than a hundred haiku, more than thirty tanka, and four kanshi -- are arranged chronologically within each genre, revealing the development of Shiki's art and the seamless way in which he wove his life and illness into his poetry.