Kisen



Kisen (喜撰) was an early Heian period Buddhist monk and waka poet. Little is known about his life other than that he lived in Mount Uji.

When Ki no Tsurayuki wrote the Japanese preface of the Kokinshū, he selected Kisen as one of the six poetic sages (六歌仙) whose work was to be considered as superior. Tsurayuki says the following to comment on Kisen's work: The use of words is a delicate thing&mdash;from start to end it does not express the thing that actually is. That is to say, to speak of the autumn moon, one compares it to the clouds at dawn.

Kisen is sometimes said to be the author of the poetry collection Waka sakushiki (倭歌作式), also known as the Kisen-shiki (喜撰式), but it is probably apocryphal and created well after the end of the Heian period.

The following two eika are the only poems that can be confidently traced back to him: