Birds, Beasts, & Blossoms: Asian Art Prints & Poems

Birds, Beasts, & Blossoms is a 110-page book that presents 50 full-color, public domain, Asian art prints and a poem on each opposite page by Michael relating to the art.    From the Introduction:

I’ve loved Asian art for many years. My parents spent two years in Taiwan, and brought back art from China. Japanese art and literature has also long fascinated me. As a poet, I’ve written and studied haiku and its progenitors and variations.
Being an amateur naturalist also led me to Chinese and Japanese art, which renders nature scenes so carefully but also quite spiritually. Birds, frogs, even insects seem to have an individual character. The Buddhist and Shinto reverence for nature is evident in most oriental art.
When I found that much exquisite oriental art can be found as public domain images on the Internet, I decided to write poems based on some of them and to create this book using them.
Many of the poems in this book attempt to capture the spiritual qualities of the images. I’ve tried to infuse some of them with aware, the Japanese term for a sensitivity to the transience of things, which induces a gentle sadness.
Another Japanese concept I’ve endeavored to apply in some of these poems is yũgen, which connotes a beauty that is deep, mysterious, and becomes one with the perceiver.
Others of the poems are humorous; some are philosophical. One of the poems is an homage to Bashō’s famous frog haiku. Another references a well-known poem by Wallace Stevens. I hope they won’t be offended.
I hope you enjoy this pairing of Asian nature images and the poetry they elicited as much as I enjoyed its creation.