Songs from My Heart
 |
Pub. Year
1978,
rept 1997
Publisher
Weatherhill
ISBN
0-8348-0398-4
|
Songs from My Heart is perhaps best described as a selection of Ikeda’s personal diaries of his travels and experiences recorded in poetry and photographs. In them, he freely expresses impressions and reflections of intimate hopes for the future, of nature’s message of strength and beauty, of people—particularly young people—he has met along his journeys.
At once a call to youth for social change that arises from revolutionary change within themselves, Ikeda’s poems give paean to all people who strive for a better world:
There is no one stronger than you
no one more trustworthy
You wear no crown perhaps
but your crownlessness should be your joy
This volume, a reprint of the 1978 first edition translated by Burton Watson, is also published in the original Japanese. Footnotes enrich the poetic images where historical or cultural references are made.
Songs from My Heart is also available in Japanese, Thai, Portuguese, Tagalog and French.
CONTENTS
Preface
Translator’s Note
Song of Youth
Looking at Nature
- Morigasaki Beach
- Spring Breezes
- Atsuta Village: Thinking of My Master’s Childhood Home
- Blossoms That Scatter
- The Sea in May
- Praying to Mount Fuji
- Dreams
- The Traveler
The Heart of the Moon
- Moonlight
- The Universe
- Autumn Wind
- Pampas Grass
- Night
- Mount Fuji and the Poet
- Parting on a Clear Day
- Time
- Theme
Songs of the Revolution
- A Believer
- Springing from the Earth
- Weeds
- The People
- The Truth of Melos
- In the River of Revolution
- Songs of Building
Sounds of Innovation
Uncrowned Friends
Culture and the Great Earth
To Those Who Guard the Dignity of Life
