378 Western American Literature of his crack. Most of the poems reflect little sense of place. Some are set within the confines of mental wards; others occur in nameless city streets. These set tings add a further degree of claustrophobia to the already emotionally circum scribed poems. In contrast to the bleakness of the verse, this volume of poems by the Ahsahta Press of Boise State University is both tactily and visually highly pleasing, and it contains an informative three-page introduction by Paul Fericano and a brief biographical sketch of the author. CHARLES H. DAUGHADAY Murray State University A Dragon in the Clouds. By Sam Hamill. (Seattle: Broken Moon Press, 1989. 128 pages, $10.00.) Basho’s Ghost. By Sam Hamill. (Seattle: Broken Moon Press, 1989. 152 pages, $10.00.) Move over Li Po, Tu Fu, Basho, Kotaro, Blyth, Snyder—leave room for Hamiru Samu (Sam Hamill)! These two books, finely produced by Broken Moon Press of Seattle, make a worthy contribution to the poetry of “inner spirit,” a lineage which includes Chinese poets and Taoist philosophers, the 17th-Century Japanese master Basho, cultural “transmitters” like R.H. Blyth, and western poets like Gary Snyder. Basho’s Ghost, especially, is a must for those interested in the core values and continuing impact of this innovative tradition. First, one hundred and twenty-eight bows for A Dragon in the Clouds, a collection of poems and Japanese translations in which Hamill deftly weaves philosophical insight, zen sensibility, American jazz, serenity of old pines, cold nights of meditation, and erotic delights of the dream-garden into a poetic unity of rare depth and refreshing vitality. Whether he is “splitting wood,/ thinking about books,” listening to the first finch or to “Coltrane blowing ‘Soul Eyes,’” contemplating Bodhidharma or sipping the “lotus dew/ in Akiko’s tangled hair,” Hamill’s poetry integrates ancient wisdom & current experience, mind & heart, Buddha-flesh & poetrybones . Each poem is a journey, an exploration of the “geography of the soul,” in which nothing is pre-fixed and nothing is final, but all is alive and dynamic Reviews 379 —even that eternal Mystery, the entanglement of “Illusion and enlightenment . . . means and end, cause and effect.” The poem is an act of love, a pilgrim age, a “garden blooming” through “the brief/ declarative sentence,/ seed syllable/ from the heart of great silence.” If A Dragon in the Clouds evokes a bow per page, the essays, poems, and translations of Basho’s Ghost deserve even more, for here Hamill successfully extends the scope of his embrace to unite prose-mind and poetry-mind, scholar ship and new creation, image and reflection. Here and now, the eternal moment unfolds its wholeness in a dynamic balance of old-master vision and fresh awareness as he cuts across barriers of time and space, language and cul tural circumstance. Basho himself was a master who cut across forms and disciplines, a pilgrim-poet known for his haibun (a weaving of poetry and prose), father of haiku (short, image-based intersections of time and the timeless, nature and human consciousness), and teacher of renga (linked poetry created by two or more poets). His aesthetic legacy has immeasurably enriched even western American literature, my old mentor Walter van Tilburg Clark being just one of those who regarded Basho as a major inspiration. Hamill brings the Basho spirit to life in Basho’s Ghost, where “The past isnot/ over, it is becoming.” HamilPs work isnot warmed-over “genuine imita tion substitute” Basho. Though Hamill’s path crosses the old pilgrimage routes here and there, he does Basho’s original genius justice by covering new ground with the same core sincerity. As Basho did in his travel diaries, Hamill weaves poetry and prose into a new form and so skillfully that the distinctions disappear between original creation, translation and reflection. In his preface, however, Hamill says, “This is not a travel journal. While . . . there are . . . journeys within journeys incorporated into the ‘text,’ the text itself is the journey.” The text becomes the everybody of the Buddha, the face of the Great Void, an expression of the poet-sage’s lovemaking with the world and of his unity with kindred spirits— the ghosts...