Reviews

This collection contains tanka by two women of the Heian court: Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu. The collection works both as an introduction to tanka, and as an exploration of them for the more experienced reader. As this book contains only poems by two poets, it allows the reader to get a sense of the writing style of each poet and of her own individual voice. Some collections of tanka or haiku contain poems by many different poets, and while this is worthwhile too, "The Ink Dark Moon" allows the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the poets, and to gain some insight into the themes of their poems. The first section contains poems by Ono no Komachi, who writes poems of yearning and unrequited love. Her poetry contains many sensual details -- tangled hair, damp sleeves, soft limbs -- which are absent from later Japanese poetry, such as haiku. Izumi Shikibu, whose work comprises the second section of the book, is also concerned with romantic love, but her subjects are wider. She touches on loss, grief, ageing, and the transience of life through imagery of the natural world. It is in these, her most Buddhist poems, that I find her voice and imagery to be the most beautiful. Below is an example of just one of her poems.

Come quickly - as soon as
these blossoms open,
they fall.
This world exists
as a sheen of dew on flowers.

Jane Hirshfield provides a very informative introduction, putting the poems into their historical context. She has also written a longer appendix, which goes into more detail about the process of translating the poems, and the cultural allusions they contain. The book also contains helpful notes on the individual poems. These make the poems very accessible to all readers, and I would recommend this book as an introduction to tanka.