Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyo (1118–1190) (review)

Reviews 253 ture and the American Frontier: A New Perspective on the Frontier Myth” charges that the frontier myth is a “male myth preoccupied with physical bravery, honor, and male friendship,” and she concludes the “women’s literature will illuminate the private, domestic, interior side of the frontier experience which the myth has ignored.” (pp. 9-10) These two opening pieces provide both a theoretical foundation for the major thematic con­ cern in later essays of the book and one modern woman’s poetic response to the frontier woman’s life. Many essays contained in this book, whether about writings by women or about women, present women in conflict with the frontier because of its lack of community and its unfamiliar culture. These essays suggest that women respond to this conflict in one of two broadly defined ways; some rise to the challenge presented by the West, and others are crushed by it. Jeanne McKnight’s “American Dream, Nightmare Underside: Diaries, Let­ ters and Fiction of Women on the American Frontier,” Barbara Quissell’s “Dorothy Scarborough’s Critique of the Frontier Experience in The Wind,” and Sylvia Grider’s “Madness and Personification in Giants in the Earth” explore the inability of some women to adapt to the frontier. Elinor Lenz’s “Homestead Home,” Ann Ronald’s “The Tonopah Ladies,” and Barbara Meldrum’s “Conrad Ritchter’s Southwestern Ladies” are just a few of the essays which discuss women or characterizations of women that become full individuals as a result of the frontier experience. Other essays in the book relate less closely to the concerns of frontier women, but they investigate the technical devices of women writers, both past and present, and the contexts within which they define themselves. Bernice Slote’s essay on Willa Cather and Steve Tatum’s essay on Judith Wright are two such essays. Although a book of this size could hardly be expected to completely cover the subject implied by its title, Women, Women Writers, and the West provides a thoughtful, if brief, glance at many aspects of that sub­ ject and closer looks at confined areas within the unmanageable larger topic. HELEN COX THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, Utah Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyo (1118-1190). Trans­ lated by William R. LaFleur. (New York: New Directions, 1978. 100 pages, $2.95.) Western poets, especially on the Pacific Coast, often show a strong feel­ ing for Oriental poetry. Asia is, after all, just over the ocean, you can sense 254 Western American Literature that, and the descendant of the Asians who helped build the railroads are still present, many of them still practicing such ancestral religions as Budd­ hism. This ingratiating bilingual volume of poems by Saigyo (literally WestGo !), a wandering Buddhist monk and nature poet, comes with an appre­ ciative foreword by Gary Snyder, our most famous Buddhist wanderer. William LaFleur has contributed an introduction as well as the translations, and it helps us to understand not only Saigyo but also the appeal of the Buddhist writings for poets like Rexroth, Snyder and Whalen. It is probably unfortunate that so much of the writing about Buddhism in English has stressed the rather glamorous notion of enlightenment rather than the concept of interdependence, a more fundamental idea. LaFleur has the right balance in his introduction: he mentions “codependent origin­ ation,” the Buddhist term for interdependence, very early. While Saigyo has a few poems about satori, or enlightenment, he has many more that rest on an understanding of the links man has with nature: Tightly held by rocks Through winter, the ice today Begins to come undone: A way-seeker also is the water, Melting, murmuring from the moss. The realization that we are not self-sufficient beings is a step toward Buddhist enlightenment — and a step in the direction of an ecological view of nature as well. William Everson has argued in Archetype West that the stunning landscape of western America encourages the writer to deal with an “apotheosis,” a transfiguring but violent experience. American pantheism expresses itself in the West through bloody scenes impelled by a sacred and relentless energy. Such a theory works reasonably well with Norris and Jeffers, but...