Wang Wei

699 – 761 (~62)

1 live poem · Mandarin Chinese

Among the towering figures of China’s Golden Age of poetry, Wang Wei stands apart—not as a rival to Li Bai’s celestial intoxication or Du Fu’s earthly anguish, but as a quiet, meditative counterpoint. He is the poet of the empty mountain, the painter of the silent stream, the musician who heard the cosmic resonance in a single falling blossom. To read Wang Wei is to step into a landscape where human presence is a fle…

“We must wait for Spring to come: till the grasses sprout and the trees bloom. Then wandering together in the spring hills we shall see the trout leap lightly from the stream, the white gulls stretch their wings, the dew fall on the green moss.”

Yosa Buson

1716 – 17 January 1784 (~68)

1 live poem · Japanese

Yosa Buson, born in 1716 and dead on 17 January 1784, occupies a singular place in Japanese culture: he was at once one of the supreme masters of haiku, a major painter of the Edo period, an editor and teacher, a student of literary history, and a deliberate maker of artistic personae. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, he is regularly named among the three greatest poets of the classical haiku tradition. Su…

“What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means. What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see. You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance.”