Poet Monks

Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how Buddhist poet-monks, who first appeared in the latter half of Tang-dynasty China, asserted a bold new vision of poetry that proclaimed the union of classical verse with Buddhist practices of repetition, incantation, and meditation. Mazanec traces the historical development of the poet-monk as a distinct actor in the Chinese literary world, arguing for the importance of religious practice in medieval literature. As they witnessed the collapse of the world around them, these monks wove together the frayed threads of their traditions to establish an elite-style Chinese Buddhist poetry. Poet-Monks shows that during the transformative period of the Tang-Song transition, Buddhist monks were at the forefront of poetic innovation.

Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how Buddhist poet-monks, who first appeared in the latter half of Tang-dynasty China, asserted a bold new vision of poetry that proclaimed the union of classical verse with Buddhist practices of repetition, incantation, and meditation. Mazanec traces the historical development of the poet-monk as a distinct actor in the Chinese literary world, arguing for the importance of religious practice in medieval literature. As they witnessed the collapse of the world around them, these monks wove together the frayed threads of their traditions to establish an elite-style Chinese Buddhist poetry. Poet-Monks shows that during the transformative period of the Tang-Song transition, Buddhist monks were at the forefront of poetic innovation.

This unique collection presents the verse, much of it translated for the first time, of fourteen eminent Chinese Buddhist poet monks. Featuring the original Chinese as well as english translations and historical introductions by Burton Watson, J.P. Seaton, Paul Hansen, James Sanford, and the editors, this book provides an appreciation and understanding of this elegant and traditional expression of spirituality. "So take a walk with...these cranky, melancholy, lonely, mischievous poet-ancestors. Their songs are stout as a pilgrim's stave or a pair of good shoes, and were meant to be taken on the great journey." --Andrew Schelling, from his Introduction

Drawing from her work in comparative religion and cultural anthropology, Adrie Kusserow offers a collection of portraits of Westerners in the East and Easterners in the West struggling to relearn and relive their ideas of culture, religion, and God. These poems expose the human craving for the nourishment of a spiritual life. Celebrated poet Karen Swenson has written the Foreword. Adrie Kusserow received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University in 1996 and is currently associate professor of cultural anthropology at St. Michael's College in Vermont. She continues to do cross-cultural field work on the spread of Eastern philosophies to the West.

Chinese Buddhist monks of the Song dynasty (960–1279) called the irresistible urge to compose poetry “the poetry demon.” In this ambitious study, Jason Protass seeks to bridge the fields of Buddhist studies and Chinese literature to examine the place of poetry in the lives of Song monks. Although much has been written about verses in the gong’an (Jpn. kōan) tradition, very little is known about the large corpora—roughly 30,000 extant poems—composed by these monastics. Protass addresses the oversight by using strategies associated with religious studies, literary studies, and sociology. He weaves together poetry with a wide range of monastic sources and in doing so argues against positing a “literary Chan” movement that wrote poetry as a path to awakening; he instead presents an understanding of monks’ poetry grounded in the Song discourse of monks themselves. The work begins by examining how monks fashioned new genres, created their own books, and fueled a monastic audience for monks’ poetry. It traces the evolution of gāthā from hymns found in Buddhist scripture to an independent genre for poems associated with Chan masters as living buddhas. While Song monastic culture produced a prodigious amount of verse, at the same time it promoted prohibitions against monks’ participation in poetry as a worldly or Confucian art: This constructive tension was an animating force. The Poetry Demon highlights this and other intersections of Buddhist doctrine with literary sociality and charts productive pathways through numerous materials, including collections of Chan “recorded sayings,” monastic rulebooks, “eminent monk” and “flame record” hagiographies, manuscripts of poetry, Buddhist encyclopedia, primers, and sūtra commentary. Two chapter-length case studies illustrate how Song monks participated in two of the most prominent and conservative modes of poetry of the time, those of parting and mourning. Protass reveals how monks used Chan humor with reference to emptiness to transform acts of separation into Buddhist teachings. In another chapter, monks in mourning expressed their grief and dharma through poetry. The Poetry Demon impressively uncovers new and creative ways to study Chinese Buddhist monks’ poetry while contributing to the broader study of Chinese religion and literature.