In A Mountain Village Poem by Saigyo

Beautifully written! Only a person who experiences the blast knows what sadness is!

Saigyo wrote about solitude and loneliness, often using images from nature to portray his emotions..

In his collection 'Sankashu', Saigyo’s style allowed for a number of transposed images, of deepening significance. Saigyo’s poems opened with a conversational exclamation, followed by an explanation. The poems of the 'Shinkokinshu', an imperial anthology of poetry written by Saigyo and his contemporaries, were less subjective, had fewer verbs and more nouns, relied less on word play, allowed for repetition, had breaks in the flow, were slightly more colloquial, and were much more somber and melancholic. Like this one.

Saigyō was influenced by the style of the poems of the 'Kokinshu', which focused on a single image, followed by the poet’s reflections, and were characterized by word play and very elegant language.