Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241)

Another great work by Peter Macmillan, whose translations of the poems are effective as poetry, but whose elaborate textual apparatus is a glory to behold for nerds like me. You can read all the poems in an hour. You could spend your life puzzling over them.

A Valentine's Day gift from my husband. I still prefer them in the original Japanese, but these are quite good translations.

This is a classical Japanese collection (thirteenth century) of 5-7-5-7-7 verse (waka). It's fairly well-known, though the poetry itself is only moderately good by modern standards. The poems are generally self-reflective, and a large number of them are simply plaintive decrees of love in one form or another. The version available on the web, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/index.html, is actually an excellent translation in direct clear language, which does a very reasonable show more job of preserving the literal meaning and providing the rich details of the original poems. The book by Honda, on the other hand, converts each poem into a 4-line poem with an abab rhyming pattern. In the process, the meaning is sometimes significantly compromised and the syntax is frequently contorted to make the rhymes work. Honda also gets caught up in archaic "poet-speak" with lovely regressions like "ere", "alas", and "lo". In any case, the online version is definitely worth looking at -- they include wonderful woodblock prints (in black-and-white) with each poem. show less

Considered as translations, these are rather awkward, but the collection is culturally important as it is the basis for a traditional game which is apparently still the basis of
much of the popular knowledge of traditional poets in Japan. Some of my Japanese students still know these poems on account of the game. This sequence has also been illustrated by Japanese artists.