Nyogen Senzaki

Post date: Jun 06, 2020 9:44:1 PM

One of my all-time favourite Zen books is Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, compiled in 1957 by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. Clement Hoyt, who published the first English-language haiku magazine, American Haiku, had studied with Senzaki. Hoyt established the Nyogen Senzaki Memorial Haiku Prize, which ran from 1964 to 1980, in Arkansas (Senzaki died in 1958). I did not know until recently that Senzaki had written several meditations on the poet Bashō. I’ve assembled three of them in the “Bashō” section on the Poems About Haiku page. Please have a look at “Bashō, the hokku poet,” “Bashō [I],” and “Bashō [II].” And for something complete different, check out the new postscript about a case of plagiarism added to the “Haiku Sensibilities of E. E. Cummings” essay.