Welcome to crazycloud.org

Crazy Cloud was the nickname of Ikkyū, a 14th century Zen monk from Japan. You can read about him on Wikipedia.

Ikkyū wrote a series of poems about a wide range of subjects. He used a wide range of allusions and metaphors.

There's a fantastic translation of many of these works called "Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan" but it's out of print. This anthology was translated by Sonja Arntzen, a scholar from Canada.

Arntzen has agreed to allow a rich digital version of her translations to be made for the internet age. What could "rich" and "digital" mean?

  • You can access poems individually on a computer screen or smart phone
  • You can view the English as well as the Kanbun for each poem
  • You can view her expert footnotes for each poem
  • You can view other related poems

    • It sounds like hypertext!

    My name is Justin Hall, I'm excited to bring this text online. I could use some advice about how to structure the data!

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