STRYK, Lucien

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Nationality: American. Born: Kolo, Poland, 7 April 1924. Education: Indiana University, Bloomington, B.A. 1948; University of Maryland, College Park, M.F.S. 1950; Sorbonne, Paris; University of London; University of Iowa, Iowa City, M.F.A. 1956. Military Service: U.S. Army, 1943–45. Family: Married; two children. Career: Professor emeritus of English, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. Visiting lecturer, Niigata University, Japan, 1956–58, and Yamaguchi University, Japan, 1962–63; Fulbright lecturer, Iran, 1961–62. Awards: Grove Press fellowship, 1960; Yale University-Asia Society grant, 1961; Ford Foundation faculty fellowship, University of Chicago, 1963; Isaac Rosenbaum award (Voices), 1964; Swallow Press award, 1965; National Translation grant, 1969; National Endowment for the Arts award, 1975; Illinois Governor's award, 1979; Illinois Arts Council award, 1983; Rockefeller fellowship, 1984; Illinois Teachers of English Author of the Year award, 1992. Address: c/o Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Taproot. Oxford, Fantasy Press, 1953.

The Trespasser. Oxford, Fantasy Press, 1956.

Notes for a Guidebook. Denver, Swallow, 1965.

The Pit and Other Poems. Chicago, Swallow Press, 1969.

Awakening. Chicago, Swallow Press, 1973.

Selected Poems. Chicago, Swallow Press, 1976.

Three Zen Poems. Knotting, Bedfordshire, Sceptre Press, 1976.

The Duckpond. London, J. Jay/Omphalos Press, 1978.

Zen Poems. Cambridge, Embers Handpress, 1980.

Cherries. Bristol, Rhode Island, Ampersand Press, 1983.

Willows. Cambridge, Embers Handpress, 1983.

Collected Poems 1953–1983. Athens, Swallow Press-Ohio University Press, 1984.

Bells of Lombardy. DeKalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 1986.

Of Pen and Ink and Paper Scraps. Athens, Swallow Press-Ohio University Press, 1989.

Where We Are: Selected Poems and Zen Translations. London, Skoob, 1995.

And Still Birds Sing: New & Collected Poems. Athens, Swallow Press-Ohio University Press, 1998.

Recordings: Zen Poems, Folkways, 1980; Selected Poems, Folkways, 1983.

Other

Zen: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews, with TakashiIkemoto. New York, Doubleday, 1965.

Encounter with Zen: Writings on Poetry and Zen. Athens, Swallow Press-Ohio University Press, 1981.

Editor, Heartland: Poets of the Midwest. DeKalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 1967; Heartland 2, 1975.

Editor, World of the Buddha: A Reader. New York, Doubleday, 1968.

Editor and translator, with Takashi Ikemoto, Afterimages: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi. Chicago, Swallow Press, and London, Alan Ross, 1970.

Editor, and translator with Takashi Ikemoto, The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry. Chicago, Swallow Press, and London, Allen Lane, 1977; revised edition, as Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, New York, Grove Press, 1995.

Editor, Prairie Voices: A Collection of Illinois Poets. Peoria, Illinois, Spoon River Poetry Press, 1980.

Translator, with Takashi Ikemoto and Taigan Takayama, Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane's Bill. New York, Grove/Atlantic, 1981.

Translator, with Takashi Ikemoto, Twelve Death Poems of the Chinese Zen Masters. Providence, Rhode Island, Hellcoal Press, 1973.

Translator, Three Zen Poems after Shinkichi Takahashi. Knotting, Bedfordshire, Sceptre Press, 1976.

Co-Translator, Haiku of the Japanese Masters. Derry, Pennsylvania, Rook Press, 1977.

Co-Translator, The Duckweed Way: Haiku of Issa. Derry, Pennsylvania, Rook Press, 1977.

Translator, Bird of Time: Haiku of Basho. Vermillion, South Dakota, Flatlands Press, 1983.

Translator, Traveler My Name: Haiku of Basho. Norwich, Embers Handpress, 1984.

Translator, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, and London, Penguin, 1985.

Translator, Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi. Urbana. University of Illinois Press. 1986.

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Bibliography: "Lucien Stryk: A Bibliography" by Craig S. Abbott, in Analytical & Enumerative Bibliography (DeKalb, Illinois), 5(3–4), 1991.

Manuscript Collection: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University.

Critical Studies: Interviews in Modern Poetry Studies (Buffalo, New York), 10(1), 1980, Loblolly (Gary, Texas), 2, 1985, and AmericanPoetry Review (Philadelphia), March/April 1990; Zen, Poetry, the Art of Lucien Stryk edited by Susan Porterfield, Athens, Ohio, Swallow Press, 1993, and "Portrait of a Poet As a Young Man: Lucien Stryk" by Porterfield, in Midwestern Miscellany (East Lansing, Michigan), 22, 1994; West Meets East in Lucien Stryk's Poetry (dissertation) by Brigitte Debord, University of Arkansas, 1995.

Lucien Stryk comments:

I consider myself primarily a poet with a strong interest in oriental philosophy. Some critics have associated me with other poets and schools, but frankly I like to think of myself as an independent.

I do not think a grown-up poet can do much about the content of his verse: he either has or has not worthy concerns, he is either small or large minded, and such things as his politics and social attitudes generally get into this verse one way or another. My chief concern as a poet is to make something, something firmly enough crafted to assure its life for longer than one hurried reading. How to get this done is the main study of my life. I suppose that what some critics have called my economy of statement has to a certain degree been influenced by my work as a translator of Zen poetry, but I am far from certain about that.

Anyhow, I try for a firm line and, most important of all, image and/or metaphor without which, so far as I am concerned, there cannot be poetry. Whatever else he is—and he had better be much more—the poet is an active, finely tuned sensorium, his eye working perfectly with his ear and his fingers touching delicately. When the poet is that, and when his theme is worthy, he may produce a good poem. Yet the making of a good poem is never less than a mystery, and no poet would really want it to be anything less, however much he despairs.

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Lucien Stryk has written that the poet's ideal is "to get 'beyond poetry,' … to avoid the hateful evidence of our will to impress." Whether the subject be boyhood and domestic incidents, admired works of art, the horrors of the Pacific theater of World War II, or his experiences throughout the northern hemisphere, Stryk has sought an unadorned poetry depending on clarity of image. Known for translations of and writings about oriental literature, Stryk has found a discipline—personal as well as aesthetic—in Zen. As he says in the watershed poem "Awakening," Zen provided "the moment of my / pointing." Writing out of the heightened, cleansed consciousness of his discipline, he says, "I am always happy, / … / fully aware."

Such calm has not come easily. Stryk's first two books were indulgently artful, and one senses that self-justification has often challenged his determination to become a self-effaced, "awakened" man. In "Away," for example, when the poet longs for picturesque foreign places, he is immediately chastised: "Down, down, and breathe!" His "feet go faster faster, / suddenly fly off"; calm returns, and he bows "to Master Takayama / who smiles all the way from Japan." Indeed, one might argue that Stryk's great poems result from—perhaps portray—successful resolution of artistic and spiritual dilemmas.

Especially during the 1960s and 1970s, Stryk achieved poems that, while admirable by many standards, steadied with muga, an unrestrained identification with their objects, an unclouded vision. "It is joy," he writes in "Zen: The Rocks of Sesshu," "that lifts those pigeons to / Stitch the clouds / With circling, light flashing from underwings." "Awakening," a later, equally impressive sequence, images not only the mind-clearing exhilaration of Zen but also the self-dissolution ("mind pointing / like a torch, I cannot see beyond / the frost, out nor in") that reveals the immensity of the void inherent in even the most familiar things:

Softness everywhere,
snow a smear,
air a gray sack.
 
Time. Place. Thing.
Felt between
skin and bone, flesh.

Just as important, poems not dealing directly with Zen present the discoveries of a startled mind: "Étude," which tells the miracle of a plain woman's playing of Chopin; "Memo to the Builder," which calls for a house that would allow birds to "make a whir- / / ring thoroughfare / Of a room or two" so that "the wild, the rare / Not only happen …. But / Be the normal"; poems like "Amputee," "Clown,"and "Busker," which quickly and surely focus the wit, pathos, or mystique of a person; "The Goose," which remembers a bird killed by the poet's car and the maddening grief that followed; and "Rites of Passage," a lovely evocation of a son's inevitable separation from his father.

The same sensibility—words that "hide nothing except the art behind them"—has yielded vivid poems about World War II, based on Stryk's as well as others' experiences and ranging in mood from anger to reconciliation. "The Pit" recalls the gruesome work of burying bloated corpses during combat and concludes, "Ask anyone who / Saw it: nobody won that war." On the other hand, "Letter to Jean-Paul Baudot, at Christmas," a poem of irresistible pathos, tells of cannibalism among French resistance fighters and of one man's annual retching when snow reminds him of the horror:

I see you on the first snow of the year
spreadeagled, face buried in that stench.
I write once more, Jean-Paul, though you don't
 
answer, because I must: today men do far worse.
Yours in hope of peace, for all of us,
before the coming of another snow.

And recollections of World War II have inspired some of the most moving of Stryk's later work, for example, "Rooms," in which he also eulogizes his mother, and "Park of the Martyrs of Liberty," the eighteenth of the twenty-six parts of the sequence "Bells of Lombardy," set in Bellagio, Italy.

It is tempting to speculate what a reader of the future might find distinctive about Stryk's poems. Their international scope would have to be part of the answer. Stryk has set almost half of his mature poems in recognizable foreign countries, not only Japan but also England, Sweden, Spain, France, Italy, Russia, and Iran. One sees women in a Japanese mine "bent over / Feedbelts circling like blood," a beggar woman inside her crate in Iran, "cracked almsbowl up, / Ten rials a snapshot, jaw clenched miserably / For an extra five," and "the bronzed Spaniard" who upstages the orators of London's Hyde Park with his acrobatics.

The drama of Stryk's fathoming unfamiliar people, places, and even animals—of his learning to replace tourists' eyes intoxicated with the exotic with the less romanticized vision of the knowledgeable, often disillusioned, but also awakened and hopeful man—has shaped an art that reveals, as Stryk has said it must, "the full range of [a man's] life."

—Jay S. Paul