A Waka Anthology

"Grasses of Remembrance," the second volume of Edwin Cranston's monumental "Waka Anthology," carries forward the story of Japanese court poetry through its Early Classical period, drawing from sources dating from the 890s to the 1080s. These two centuries saw the revival of the prestige of poetry in the native tongue after a century of official preference for versification in Chinese. An anthology of anthologies, "Grasses of Remembrance" draws copiously from the first four imperially ordered collections, "Kokinshu," "Gosenshu," "Shuishu," and "Goshuishu," examining the structure and illustrating the content of each. In all, the book contains over 2,600 poems in lively and readable translation, including selections from "Shinsen Man'yoshu," a late-ninth-century collection of parallel verses in Chinese and Japanese, and all 795 poems from "The Tale of Genji."