Poetry and Zen by R. H. Blyth

Author:R. H. Blyth [Blyth, R. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

The Poems of Emerson: A Selection

This introduction accompanies a selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry published in 1949 in Kenkyūsha’s Pocket English Series. The English poet Edmund Blunden was a friend of Blyth’s and, like him, taught and lectured in Japan both before and after the war.

A few days ago, Mr. Blunden, on my asking him what he thought of Emerson’s poetry, immediately quoted some lines of his and said that he considered Emerson greater as a poet than as a prose writer. Mr. Blunden did not expound, but I suppose he meant, not that Emerson’s transcendentalism is better expressed in his verses than in his essays, but that his poetry as poetry is better than his prose as prose. Indeed, Emerson’s verse is worth careful study even from the technical point of view, for its very irregularity and frequent uncouthness is expressive. To a large extent Emerson’s aim was that of Thoreau,

a style in which the matter is all in all, and the manner nothing at all,

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