During the medieval period, samurai often wrote special poems, known as jisei, in the hours before their deaths. The tradition originated in Zen Buddhism, and fused three important principles from Zen tradition: – The material world is transient and impermanent – Understanding reality requires an absence of self-nature and acceptance (or pursuit) of emptiness – Attachment to the world causes suffering The earliest recorded jisei was written by Prince Ōtsu, a younger son of Emperor Temmu, just before the prince’s execution in 686. Customarily, composition of jisei was done only by members of Japan’s nobility, samurai, poets, or Buddhist priests. The poem was supposed to
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My Journey to Becoming a Writer – a Guest Post from Gina Venturini
Please welcome talented poet and author (and my friend), Gina Venturini, author of Calling Love Home (2015) and the newly-released The Color of My Heart is You. Gina grew up in Nebraska, where she studied opera. After college Gina moved to the hotbed of Minneapolis and ended up singing backup vocals for an Elvis / Neil Diamond Impersonator. Wanting more she left with a suit case and took a train to Memphis, where she connected with a Marriott circuit band that toured all over the east coast and Wisconsin. Then, she was drawn to California for personal reasons and continued to pursue music. In
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