Bob Blaisdell, The Santa Barbara Independent, Jan. 17, 2002
The poems are clear, lovely meditations--I find them as sturdy and graceful as willows.

Lin Rolens, Santa Barbara News-Press, Mar. 17, 2002
A few moments with these poems...and the world will be fresher and more joyful when you return to it.

Book Description
As if done with sumi ink, these verses by John Wilson are meditative responses to the landscapes of Sesshu, Sesson, Buson, and other classical masters. Each poem faces a reproduction of a work by an artist of mythic stature. The succinct loveliness of the poems seems often as acute as the verses of Li Po and Tu Fu.

About the Author
John Wilson studied Japanese for four years and has lived in Japan. He teaches Asian and Western literature in the College of Creative Studies at UCSB. He has translated from Japanese Smoke in the Mountain Valley by Yoshiko Shigekane and the folktale "The Head-Shaving Fox." His poems are included in Four Dogs: Mountain Songs and in many literary journals.

Excerpted from Ink on Paper: Poems on Chinese & Japanese Paintings by John Wilson. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"There All Along": Art should give us back
the world that our living
confiscates. Put back birds
there all along: distinct,
crooked- billed, scratching at lice like
old nobility in their feather
wedding beds; the caged canary
(whose clear song dies
covered with a cloth of Ashbery's
weave) put back in its plain
wooden casement swung open on
marguerites; poise,
directness, vigilance-- an egret
cocked in the reeds absorbed in its own stillness, a straight line
of soaring geese. Our traffic nowhere
truly affirms where we go
as do tracks of sanderlings
in the sand. We think, and worry
retracts ourselves
like feelers drawn in to our heads
afraid of leaves curling
on a spring peach tree. To turn and be
turned seaward when at sunrise
the salt air and sound of waves
pull at us, unrushed,
as much ourselves as pelicans are
pelicans low along a glassy
wave incising their own
headstone with a wingtip
as they fly. "In a Boat Near the Shore" When hungry, eat;
thirsty, drink. You can't sleep
pulled at like that, boat moored
to a log on shore. Sparrows chup chup
on rice stalks, waves slap, wheels
chatter, hoofs rap. Two ducks fly away
the way wind blows
bamboo over you, a black splash
(shadow?) hurtles without a thought
off a rock, an invisible
current beckons
you and your thin oar. Go.
Cut the line. Lake and sky alike. Light,
mist all around. Others
drifted there before.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

As if done with sumi ink, these verses by John Wilson are meditative responses to the landscapes of Sesshu, Sesson, Buson, and other classical masters. Each poem faces a reproduction of a work by an artist of mythic stature. The succinct loveliness of the poems seems often as acute as the verses of Li Po and Tu Fu.

Author Biography: John Wilson studied Japanese for four years and has lived in Japan. He teaches Asian and Western literature in the College of Creative Studies at UCSB. He has translated from Japanese Smoke in the Mountain Valley by Yoshiko Shigekane and the folktale "The Head-Shaving Fox." His poems are included in Four Dogs: Mountain Songs and in many literary journals.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Words as precise and exact as the brush strokes he chronicles. — Joanne Kyger

These poems and paintings prove a compassionate and delicious company. Their reflective perceptions of the common world make a securing place for all to enter. — Robert Creeley