The poems themselves are presented in two sections, Ono no Komachi’s work preceding Izumi Shikibu’s. The book offers a substantial introduction, placing both writers in their historical context. They wrote during the Heian era, the only period of Japanese history where female poets appear to have been able to rise to the height of their art and have been regarded as literary geniuses. So the The Ink Dark Moon presents some of the translated works of Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu two of Japan’s greatest practitioners of the Tanka form. Indeed at times while The Ink Dark Moon, I found these poems from 8th-10th Century Japan more akin to the overtly emotional work of the western Romantics (albeit in shorter form). With Tanka the poet expresses their emotion, asks questions directly of the reader(or themselves) and layers emotional imagery that can seem to explode off the page (particularly if you have only been reading Haiku). If Haiku are observational and sparse, understated in their emotion, detached from the poet’s ego – then I find that Tanka are almost their opposite.
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