Professor Steven D Carter Japanese Poetry sku-7986630

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology is a hardcover listed under Professor Steven D Carter in Ages 9-12 Kids' Books. It brings together more than 1,100 poems in traditional Japanese genres, from the earliest periods to the twentieth century. The source describes it as the most varied and comprehensive English selection of traditional Japanese poetry then available.

It quotes Ezra Pound calling poetry "the most concentrated form of verbal expression" and describes Japanese poems as compressed, in part because of the language's sounds. At the early courts of Nara and Kyoto, poems served as artistic works and as messages between lovers and friends; courtly decorum also encouraged indirect expression.

The classical uta, also called tanka or waka, is a thirty-one-syllable form described as foundational to Japanese poetry written between 850 and 1900. The compiler prioritized poets and works regarded by Japanese scholars as artistically or historically important, including Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Izumi Shikibu, Saigyo, Matsuo Basho, the Man'yoshu, Kokinshu, and Shin kokinshu.

The anthology also samples poetic diaries, linked verse, Chinese forms, and comic verse. SKU: sku-7986630.