Mad Monk Ikkyu

At first, John Guzlowski's Ikkyū reminded me of Thomas Merton's The Way of Chuang Tzu. But Guzlowski broke away from the tradition of Western poets translating Asian texts. These Ikkyū poems were not originally written by the great Japanese Buddhist monk; rather, they were playfully invented, forged by the vast and imaginative mind of Guzlowski. Like any Zen text, Guzlowski's Ikkyū is a journey into contradictions, where laughter and sadness commingle, where meaning is embedded in meaninglessness, where sound is found in silence, where from winter comes spring which is followed by fall. There is both simplicity and depth in this little book. And in the center of it, the life force of these poems, is the still point, one that we desperately need in our chaotic world of strife, confusion, and ignorance.

-Bunkong Tuon, writer and critic at Union College

John Guzlowski traces the journey of the mad monk poet Ikkyū from the sea to the temple in a series of startling, luminous, precisely imagined, brief, interlocking poems-poems in the spirit of Ikkyū, certainly, but in a voice all his own; poems that make us laugh at ourselves even as they lead us deeper into an acceptance of the seasons of life and the inevitability of death. Each of these poems is a small lantern lighting the way toward wisdom and faith, revealing the world's beauty along the way.

-Cecilia Woloch, author of Carpathia

I met Ikkyū today, fifteenth-century mad-monk, long thought dead, but as alive as possible in the words of John Guzlowski's The Mad Monk Journeys from the Sea to the Temple. Guzlowski claims these are not Ikkyū words, but Ikkyū's final bit of mischief may be his invasion of the author's twenty-first-century pen to prove his influence is eternal-Eternal like the zen and humor in these poems. Eternal like reading this is a master class on the Tatami mats of Kyoto. John Guzowski gives a glimpse into an ancient poet's journey with a sensibility that reins with an endearing modern simplicity. It's a journey well worth taking.

-Rick Lupert, author of The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express