Bottom Dog Press, Inc.          

Connections:

Morning Dew: Tanka by Larry Smith

and

core & all: haiku by Barbara Sabol

"Humble and direct, here we find poems that resonate in the companionship of our daily universe, rendered in the brevity of a heart’s breath. True in vision and form, this is such a great collection." –John Stickney, author of These American Moments

Review by Marion Boyer:

This is a lovely volume of Tanka and haiku that distill our everyday moments down to be treasured. Larry Smith's Tanka speak of "morning songs," "a line of sparrows along a railroad track," "the stillness that comes like a river touching everything" and is echoed and answered by Barbara Sabol's finely crafted haiku of the "wash and ebb of the moonlit beach," the vase content without flowers." Every page is alive with images that resonate and reverberate.

          

On the road to Columbus

sunlight warms bright fields

of corn, soy, alfalfa.

Old tunes on car radio

hold each moment longer.  ~Larry Smith

=====
                                                     

the corner beggar

his blue eyes

like my father's

 *  *  *

 glass lake

trailing my fingers

through the clouds   ~Barbara Sabol

Edited by Ray McNiece and Larry Smith

This America Zen Poets gathering includes: NIN ANDREWS (Ohio), DAVID BUDBILL (Vermont), THOMAS RAIN CROWE (North Carolina), KATHE DAVIS (Ohio), DIANE DI PRIMA (California), STANFORD M. FORRESTER (Connecticut), TESS GALLAGHER (Washington), MARGARET GIBSON (Connecticut), JOHN GILGUN (Missouri), NETTA GILLESPIE (Illinois), SAM HAMILL (Washington), WILLIAM HEYEN (New York), JANE HIRSHFIELD (California), HOLLY HUGHES (Washington), MARY SUE KOEPPEL (Florida), MARK KUHAR (Ohio), MAC LOJOWSKY (California), RAY MCNIECE (Ohio), TOM MONTAG (Wisconsin), SHIN YU PAI (Massachusetts) * PAUL S. PIPER (Washington), MAJ RAGAIN (Ohio), DAVID RAY (Arizona), SEIDO RAY RONCI (Missouri), ANDREW SCHELLING (Colorado), PAUL SKYRM (Ohio), LARRY SMITH (Ohio), TONY TRIGILIO (Illinois), CHASE TWICHELL (New York), and ANNE WALDMAN (New York).

A Big wonderful collection of American Poets writing in the spirit of Zen.

260 pgs.  978-0-933087-91-0 $15.00

The Records of Kosho the Toad

Poems  by Robert Tremmel

Most of us constantly seek something other than what is––a better job or more degrees, better abs or a more perfect partner. In his simple way, Kosho the Toad lights up another path for us. With all his warts, humor and love of hard liquor, he keeps his little body aimed at awakening. Like a bent old monk writing on a cave wall, he hops along and points out what he sees, simply and honestly.

I'll delightedly read him to my son, to Zen students, and on a barely-light morning, to a blank wall.  - Sara Jisho Siebert, Soto Zen Priest, Ames, Iowa

 "Many of the poems leap off from the classic Chinese Buddhist koan collection The Blue Cliff Record, slyly illuminating what 'no words could ever explain'—the interconnectedness of all things (both toad and human). The Records of Kosho the Toad is a profound, surprising delight."  

~Chase Twichell, author of Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems

Tu Fu Comes to America

A Story in Poems

Larry Smith

Enlarged Second Edition: 8 new poems

"In the winter of 770 CE, Tu Fu left this world. In Larry Smith's fine narrative, he reasppears in present day Cleveland. We see America through his ees, through his contemplative heart. Hope, loss, friendship, love, the old quarrel with the world. Travel with him. Open your chest. Learn."  -Maj Ragain

Here is a story of life for a Chinese Zen poet come to Cleveland to find the way. Journey with him and his family

This is a gem of a book--poems as story.

CD with Booklet...Larry Smith reading the poems with Monte Page on flute. Includes a 16 page booklet of the poems of Zen poets Wang Wei & Taigu Ryokan. Translations by Larry Smith and Mei Hui Liu Huang.

"Full of clear intention, it's as clear as a mountain stream...mountains and rivers of Zen verse." - Review from CDBaby

Youtube Video of Two Poems by Wang Wei

 

Each Moment All

Poems

by Larry Smith

A March Street Press Book (limited edition)

Now available in new revised edition

from Bottom Dog Press

70 pages 978-1-933964-60-7    $8

“There’s a Buddha in Larry Smith’s Ohio garden. Peaceful, watchful and calm. Glide into these beautiful new poems like a bee, each one a petal of a bigger flower.” –Allen Frost, author of The Mermaid Translation



100 poems by Japan’s great poet Taigu Ryōkan (1758-1831) included in English, original Chinese, and  in Japanese, translated by poets Mei Hui Liu Huang and Larry Smith.

With an introduction "Taigu Ryokan: Great Fool" by Larry Smith.

Contains  Poems of Children  童 心; My Hut  草 庵; Travel Poems  行 腳 ; Poems of Friendship  友 情 ; A Monk’s Journal  僧 侶 生 涯 ; Spring Poems  春 ; Summer Poems  夏 ; Fall Poems  秋 ; Winter Poems  冬 ; Poems of Aging  成 長 ; Zen Meditations  禪 思 .

 “These poems, wise and direct, have been rightly treasured for centuries because of the way they expand the mind and refresh the spirit. That is their nature in their original language, and Smith and Huang have managed, with great care and affection, to recreate that nature in English.”  -David Young, poet and translator

Smith and Huang are the translators of Chinese Zen Poems: What Hold Has This Mountain and  Songs of the Woodcutter: Zen Poems of Wang Wei and Taigu Ryōkan.

Sample Poems

Hear Larry Smith reading Ryokan with Mone Page flute accompaniment

and

Watch a Youtube video of the Poems of Inviation

Now Out of Print

An expert collection of Chinese poems in the Zen spirit, compiled and translated by Mei Hui Liu Huang and Larry Smith for Bottom Dog Press.