Overview

Spring marks a transitional time between the greyness of winter and the brightness of summer. And in this way, this Chanoyu for Spring/Chanoyu para la primavera explores the complexity of our emotions. As Lawrence Durrell writes in Clea, the fourth and final volume of The Alexandria Quartet: ""How is one to make clear a single truth about the human heart?"". The question itself exposes the paradox: it is not that we are duplicitous, but that we are multiple. Our inner lives, like Spring itself, are transitional, layered, and irreducible to a single tone. Chanoyu for Spring/Chanoyu para la primavera is the second volume of the quartet Chanoyu for the Seasons /Chanoyu para las estaciones. The phrase cha-no-yu (茶の湯) means ""hot water for tea"" and refers beyond its literal meaning to the Japanese tea ceremony. This refined practice was influenced by Zen Buddhism, in which the preparation, serving, and consumption of matcha tea are carried out with a deep sense of aesthetics, harmony, and contemplation. In the first paragraph of The Book of Tea (1906), Kakuzo Okakura writes: Tea began as medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble into a religion of aestheticism...Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence...It is essentially a worship of the imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something in this impossible thing we call life. This brief and concise description of the tea ceremony could easily be applied to the composition of the short Japanese poems known as waka, with the most illustrious of these being the tanka, which was composed and incorporated in the works of writers such as Ōtomo Yakamochi, Saigyō (Mountain Hermit's Collection), Sei Shōnagon (The Pillow Book), Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji), and in the 20th century by Ishikawa Takuboku and Yosano Akiko. Yet, the most popular of the wakas in our time is the haiku, which continues to be practiced-often very poorly-all over the world, like tea haphazardly served in a plastic cup. In this book, however, the reader will come across not only tanka and haiku, but also the extended tanka or bussokusekika and the chōka or long poems (also composed of 5 and 7 syllabic combinations).

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9781887276429

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Reviews

Rolando Pérez shapes language in the spirit of the Japanese tea ceremony. Rooted in Zen and the devotion to imperfection, Pérez reminds us that meaning is not declared but steeped, patiently, in the small rituals of daily life. -Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of Homeland of My Body In the four volumes that comprise Chanoyu for the Seasons /Chanoyu para las estaciones, Pérez demonstrates once again his gift for blending intellectual rigor with lyrical grace...Like the ritual of preparing tea, each piece unfolds with balance and poise, leaving the reader gratified and enlightened. -Gustavo Pérez Firmat, author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated Next Year in Cuba

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