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Crow With No Mouth: Ikkyu, Fifteenth Century Zen Master
An eccentric classic of Zen poetry When Zen master Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) was appointed headmaster of the great temple at Kyoto, he lasted nine days before denouncing the rampant hypocrisy he saw among the monks there. He in turn invited them to look for him in the sake parlors of the Pleasure Quarters. A Zen monk-poet-calligrapher-musician, he dared to write about the joys of erotic love, along with more traditional Zen themes. He was an eccentric and genius who dared to defy authority and despised corruption. Although he lived during times plagued by war, famine, rioting, and religious upheaval, his writing and music prevailed, influencing Japanese culture to this day. "Ikkyu scandalized the Zen community of his day and is likely to scandalize some readers even now—his short poems are simultaneously bawdy, abrupt, vulgar, and reverential... It is impossible not to love the velocity and variety of his verse."— The Philadelphia Inquirer "Stephen Berg is exactly the right poet to have translated these poems."—Hayden Carruth, The Hudson Review "A deeply sensual man, Ikkyu had little patience for the fussiness of monastic life and ritual... What is especially appealing about Ikkyu's poetry is the way his sensuality infuses his Zen sensibility."— American Book Review Stephen Berg (1934-2014) was the founder and editor of American Poetry Review .
Also available by Stephen Berg
Steel Cricket
PB $16.00, 1-55659-075-X • CUSA
New & Selected Poems
PB $12.00, 1-55659-043-1 • CUSA
Also available by Stephen Berg
Steel Cricket
PB $16.00, 1-55659-075-X • CUSA
New & Selected Poems
PB $12.00, 1-55659-043-1 • CUSA
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Ikkyu
19 books68 followersIkkyū (1394-1481) was an eccentric, iconoclastic Japanese Zen Buddhist priest and poet. He had a great impact on the infusion of Japanese art and literature with Zen attitudes and ideals.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
September 11, 2012
angsty facebook status updates from six hundred years ago:
my gray cat jumped up just as I lifted this spoon
we're born we die
suddenly nothing but grief
so I put on my father's old ripped raincoat
I'm up here in the hills starving myself
but I'll come down for you
nobody knows I'm a storm I'm
dawn on the mountain twilight on the town
my gray cat jumped up just as I lifted this spoon
we're born we die
suddenly nothing but grief
so I put on my father's old ripped raincoat
I'm up here in the hills starving myself
but I'll come down for you
nobody knows I'm a storm I'm
dawn on the mountain twilight on the town
October 12, 2010
From the text:
sin like a madman until you can't do anything else
no room for any more
fuck flattery success money
all I do is sit back suck my thumb
something in us always wants to cry out
someone we love knows hears
if you don't break rules you're an ass not human
women start us passion comes and goes until death
only one koan matters
you
sin like a madman until you can't do anything else
no room for any more
fuck flattery success money
all I do is sit back suck my thumb
something in us always wants to cry out
someone we love knows hears
if you don't break rules you're an ass not human
women start us passion comes and goes until death
only one koan matters
you
January 13, 2021
'pleasure pain are equal in a clear heart
no mountain hides the moon'
and
'this boat is and is not
when it sinks both disappear'.
The collection was worth reading for those two couplets. Even perhaps only for the line 'no mountain hides the moon'.
no mountain hides the moon'
and
'this boat is and is not
when it sinks both disappear'.
The collection was worth reading for those two couplets. Even perhaps only for the line 'no mountain hides the moon'.
August 23, 2015
"her mouth played with my cock
the way a cloud plays with the sky"
---
"a crazy lecher shuttling between whorehouse and bar
this past master paints south north east west with his cock"
---
"don’t hesitate get laid that’s wisdom
sitting around chanting what crap"
---
"life’s like climbing knife-trees hills with swords sticking up
day and night something stabs you"
---
"inside the koan clear mind
gashes the great darkness"
---
"I love taking my new girl blind Mori on a spring picnic
I love seeing her exquisite free face its moist sexual heat shine"
---
"your name Mori means forest like the infinite fresh
green distances of your blindness"
the way a cloud plays with the sky"
---
"a crazy lecher shuttling between whorehouse and bar
this past master paints south north east west with his cock"
---
"don’t hesitate get laid that’s wisdom
sitting around chanting what crap"
---
"life’s like climbing knife-trees hills with swords sticking up
day and night something stabs you"
---
"inside the koan clear mind
gashes the great darkness"
---
"I love taking my new girl blind Mori on a spring picnic
I love seeing her exquisite free face its moist sexual heat shine"
---
"your name Mori means forest like the infinite fresh
green distances of your blindness"
January 25, 2008
i had a bit of glue on my hand when i read this book.
best to read this at night; something manic about these couplets: an insomniac's quickening mind (without the coming down, the fatigue):
"night after night after night stay up all night
nothing but your own night"
hit me on many levels. what to do with this body: a Zen monk in the whorehouse. the loss of a father. crows.
best to read this at night; something manic about these couplets: an insomniac's quickening mind (without the coming down, the fatigue):
"night after night after night stay up all night
nothing but your own night"
hit me on many levels. what to do with this body: a Zen monk in the whorehouse. the loss of a father. crows.
April 10, 2009
Fifteenth Century Zen master Ikkyu was the "true man of no rank..whose successive conditions are the same nameless states of moment-by-moment states of fluid identity we sense in ourselves..." Here are two poems:
all the bad things I do will go up in smoke
and so will I
my monk friend has a weird endearing habit
he weaves sandals and leaves them secretly by the roadside
all the bad things I do will go up in smoke
and so will I
my monk friend has a weird endearing habit
he weaves sandals and leaves them secretly by the roadside
July 22, 2016
Intense, earthy, compact, occasionally enlightening, occasionally mind-blowing.
November 4, 2016
pleasure pain are equal in a clear heart
no mountain hides the moon
Ikkyu. El más postpunk de todos los budistas que he leído en mi vida es este monje zen del 1400. La desconfianza en el lenguaje de los hombres, el vitalismo nsfw, el acá-y-ahora en este mundo de rocío. La traducción al inglés es anacrónica y deliciosa, todo lo escrito parece que lo escribió ayer (gran decisión de traducción: one autumn night’s a thousand centuries). Librito de cabecera, tercera vez que lo leo. Volveré, volveré a Ikkyu muchas veces más.
this ink painting of wind blowing through pines
who hears it?
clouds very high look
not one word helped them get up there
I didn’t see one thing on my trip
but I breathed and whatever I breathed was time
I hate it I know it’s nothing but
I suck out the world’s sweet juicy plum
where you are whatever you do hearing a stalk struck
remember bamboo remembers nothing
flowers are silent
silence is silent
the mind is a silent flower
the silent flower of the world opens
Lin-chi’s followers don’t know Zen I the Blind Donkey do
my tongue and gentle fingers thick hard cock
one autumn night’s a thousand centuries
November 28, 2019
Maybe the best poetry book I’ve ever glanced at - the impact of the work is immediate and unforgettable.
November 2, 2013
along with pessoa, my favorite dead poet.
a text which entered my memory and on which i dwelt the whole day:
"don’t worry please please how many times do I have to say it
there’s no way not to be who you are and where"
in a way, this is exactly what michel henry says, in his phenomenological work. the self-affection of flesh, its inability of being otherwise, its desire to run away from itself and its own suffering, its affective character.
and, of course, his erotic and irreverent poems are anthological :)
a text which entered my memory and on which i dwelt the whole day:
"don’t worry please please how many times do I have to say it
there’s no way not to be who you are and where"
in a way, this is exactly what michel henry says, in his phenomenological work. the self-affection of flesh, its inability of being otherwise, its desire to run away from itself and its own suffering, its affective character.
and, of course, his erotic and irreverent poems are anthological :)
February 10, 2015
I think this translation is overrated. It seems to me that the vernacularization involved here is subjective to such an extent that you have to "go on the ride" to "get there." It doesn't feel like Ikkyu's words so much as a hip-hop artist bringing them to the people. I guess I didn't really ever get on the ride.
July 19, 2012
This is a collection of couplets that overflow with emotion and unending questions. Sometimes these seem to be purposefully arranged to compliment each other, but I have been told this is not the case. Either way, this is a book that will have you re-reading pages and possibly memorizing passages.
March 10, 2019
Sheer beauty. A book of poetry celebrating the beauty of nature and grace 0f a life lived in
solitude and Zen Buddhism. Reading it once or twice is not enough. One wants to return
to his books of poetry often. They are an inspiration. His poems are elegant and seem
effortless in form.
solitude and Zen Buddhism. Reading it once or twice is not enough. One wants to return
to his books of poetry often. They are an inspiration. His poems are elegant and seem
effortless in form.
March 12, 2007
While this world is burning
our cat, on the roof of the shed
sleeps on a matress of dried leaves
our cat, on the roof of the shed
sleeps on a matress of dried leaves
April 3, 2010
A beatnik/obscene translation of the great Zen poet/saint Ikkyu's obscene poetry. Self-effacing, grotesque and marvelous.
September 25, 2012
Many of the poems strike me as meh, the sort of thing Henry Miller or the Beats would exalt beyond its merits - but the poet himself comes through as a fascinating figure from the 15th c.
March 16, 2017
Three word review: stunning, incisive, powerful.
April 15, 2024
i have loved this poem since i first read it in high school and have had it memorized ever since:
in searching desperately (and unsuccessfully) for other translations of this specific poem i decided to read stephen berg’s entire set. they are interesting interpretations - compared to other translations of ikkyū’s poetry they are more obviously stylized and (i assume, not being a chinese reader) less literal. berg even says at the beginning that ikkyū primarily wrote in a four line form but he used couplets to fit his own impression of the voice. there were some things i attribute to translation that i couldn’t get over - the use of “narcissus” felt particularly jarring, for example - that made me uncomfortably aware of the westernization at play.
they’re mostly effective, though, and have the tone that i loved when i first read that couplet. the voice berg uses certainly reflects a certain idea of zen, at least as we understand it in western culture. this actually works in the more vulgar poems, but it is at its best in ones like “even if Buddha himself kneeled at my deathbed / he wouldn’t be worth shit” which achieves that extremely spare, simple style and still evokes a ton of emotion.
in a way this volume feels more like a collaboration between ikkyū and berg, because the interpretation is so palpable, but i still enjoyed it and found the poems meaningful.
the biography in the foreword was a lot of fun, as a side note. i had no idea he was such a renegade!
“i like my anger” remains my favorite, but these struck me as well, for posterity:
I like my anger my grouchy furious love
amazing how we say such nice things about the dead
in searching desperately (and unsuccessfully) for other translations of this specific poem i decided to read stephen berg’s entire set. they are interesting interpretations - compared to other translations of ikkyū’s poetry they are more obviously stylized and (i assume, not being a chinese reader) less literal. berg even says at the beginning that ikkyū primarily wrote in a four line form but he used couplets to fit his own impression of the voice. there were some things i attribute to translation that i couldn’t get over - the use of “narcissus” felt particularly jarring, for example - that made me uncomfortably aware of the westernization at play.
they’re mostly effective, though, and have the tone that i loved when i first read that couplet. the voice berg uses certainly reflects a certain idea of zen, at least as we understand it in western culture. this actually works in the more vulgar poems, but it is at its best in ones like “even if Buddha himself kneeled at my deathbed / he wouldn’t be worth shit” which achieves that extremely spare, simple style and still evokes a ton of emotion.
in a way this volume feels more like a collaboration between ikkyū and berg, because the interpretation is so palpable, but i still enjoyed it and found the poems meaningful.
the biography in the foreword was a lot of fun, as a side note. i had no idea he was such a renegade!
“i like my anger” remains my favorite, but these struck me as well, for posterity:
rain drips from the roof lip / loneliness sounds like that
if there’s nowhere to rest at the end / how can I get lost on the way?
I didn’t see one thing on my trip / but I breathed and whatever I breathed was time
Ikkyū this body isn’t yours I say to myself / wherever I am I’m there
October wind crosses the world / in this field moist grass bends to itself and to the sea
one white blossom snow / razor-edged mountains slice my belly
we live in a cage of light an incredible cage / animals animals without end
inside the koan clear mind / gashes the great darkness
the wise know nothing at all / well maybe one song
watching my four-year-old daughter dance / I can’t break free of her
nobody knows I’m a storm I’m / dawn on the mountain twilight on the town
November 13, 2020
A tiny, beautiful, sacred-profane book. Ikkyu was a prominent Zen Buddhist in the 15th century. Many of his holy poems are about sex and alcohol (with a lot of specificity. especially the sex), but it's also still fully and astonishingly a spiritual text.
For Ikkyu, vice has nothing to do with pleasure. Instead it's the hypocrisy of the sanctimonious monks who try to become important and wealthy in their position.
A sampling:
Zen’s finished stick your brain in a peach branch guzzle sake
sing until you have no throat then words come by themselves
don’t hesitate get laid that’s wisdom
sitting around chanting what crap
that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind
I’m alive! right? don’t we say that?
we don’t see the bones we walk on
sick of it whatever it’s called sick of the names
I dedicate every pore to what’s here
For Ikkyu, vice has nothing to do with pleasure. Instead it's the hypocrisy of the sanctimonious monks who try to become important and wealthy in their position.
A sampling:
Zen’s finished stick your brain in a peach branch guzzle sake
sing until you have no throat then words come by themselves
don’t hesitate get laid that’s wisdom
sitting around chanting what crap
that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind
I’m alive! right? don’t we say that?
we don’t see the bones we walk on
sick of it whatever it’s called sick of the names
I dedicate every pore to what’s here
June 18, 2017
Ikkyu was the Mad Monk of medieval Japan's Rinzai sect. He was a poet, artist, drinker and womanizer. With all that he was one of the most devoutly charitable monks in the sect. He fought against hypocrisy and crony enlightenment documents. His poetry is unique and deeply personal. He offers us his sexuality and advanced age on a bed of passionately human lust dragging us into his desires and appreciations of Nature and women. I wish there were more translations as well written as Stephen Berg's versions. For me Berg made Ikkyu a living man returned to the 21st century through his literary art. I too seek to love women as much as Nature but the unspoken war breaks out in romantic places.
May 23, 2023
Beautifully captures the essence of Ikkyu's unconventional approach to Zen, highlighting his rebellious spirit and his unique way of challenging societal norms.
A verse from the book that touched the depths of my soul, inviting me to contemplate the impermanence of life and the importance of living authentically in the present moment.
With a mind like hers
I live on every word, hanging on every glance
Then she goes, and nothing remains
The familiar mountain, the empty house.
A verse from the book that touched the depths of my soul, inviting me to contemplate the impermanence of life and the importance of living authentically in the present moment.
July 13, 2022
night after night after night stay up all night
nothing but your own night
one white blossom snow
razor-edged mountains slice my belly
ten years of whorehouse joy I’m alone now in the mountains
the pines are like a jail the wind scratches my skin
don’t worry please please how many times do I have to say it
there’s no way not to be who you are and where....
in complete awe, i still can't believe i met elias ronnenfelt of iceage who recommended this to me
nothing but your own night
one white blossom snow
razor-edged mountains slice my belly
ten years of whorehouse joy I’m alone now in the mountains
the pines are like a jail the wind scratches my skin
don’t worry please please how many times do I have to say it
there’s no way not to be who you are and where....
in complete awe, i still can't believe i met elias ronnenfelt of iceage who recommended this to me
May 27, 2018
“it’s logical: if you’re not going anywhere
any road is the right one”
3,5 puan. Bazılarını çok sevdim, bazılarını sevmedim, bazılarını ise anladığımı zannetmiyorum. Bazılarını okurken ise bizim tasavvuf ehlinin sakinliğini gördüğümü hissettim. Genel olarak keyifli bir okuma olduğunu söyleyebilirim.
any road is the right one”
3,5 puan. Bazılarını çok sevdim, bazılarını sevmedim, bazılarını ise anladığımı zannetmiyorum. Bazılarını okurken ise bizim tasavvuf ehlinin sakinliğini gördüğümü hissettim. Genel olarak keyifli bir okuma olduğunu söyleyebilirim.
July 19, 2019
Ikkyu, horny old lecher, epitome of Zen sickness
bottomless desires lead to bar and brothel
dressed up flowery language, philosophical games
baffle future generations of earnest practitioners
wordless objects you call women never speak
simple receptacles for passion, emblems of pride
where is their your warmth; not in your mind
better to sit contemplate humanity
bottomless desires lead to bar and brothel
dressed up flowery language, philosophical games
baffle future generations of earnest practitioners
wordless objects you call women never speak
simple receptacles for passion, emblems of pride
where is their your warmth; not in your mind
better to sit contemplate humanity
Read
September 1, 2022"it isn't that we're alone or not alone/
whose voice do you want mine? yours?"
"only one koan matters/
you"
"sick of it whatever its called sick of the names/
I dedicate every pore to what's here"
"the crow's caw was okay but one night with a lovely whore/
opened a wisdom deeper than what the bird said"
whose voice do you want mine? yours?"
"only one koan matters/
you"
"sick of it whatever its called sick of the names/
I dedicate every pore to what's here"
"the crow's caw was okay but one night with a lovely whore/
opened a wisdom deeper than what the bird said"
July 11, 2017
"all koans just lead you on / but not the delicious pussy of the young girls I go down on"
thank you Zen Master Ikkyu
thank you Zen Master Ikkyu
July 22, 2020
this brick house I live in is really the sky
and just as priceless
and just as priceless
September 30, 2020
What a revolutionary master of his time. Reminds me of Charles Bukowski with his use of crudeness, alcohol, and sexuality in his poetry.
Read
March 8, 2021Bawdy, honest, sincere, sexy, Ikkyu is the zen master poet you didn't know you needed and didn't know a zen master could be so equally frank, grotesque and sexual. Love him!!
April 23, 2021
Hilarious & Sacred poetry
Such a mixture of life views in poetry. A blessing then a chuckle. He embraced all of life! I felt blessed to find this collection.
Such a mixture of life views in poetry. A blessing then a chuckle. He embraced all of life! I felt blessed to find this collection.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews