Slender Volumes, Richard von Sturmer, Spoor Books, 2024

76. No-Mind is the Way

Deep in thought, working on the structure of a new book, I didn’t
realize that I’d walked down the hill and across the park. I was
brought back to the present by the cries of two children playing on
a seesaw. “Seesaw” comes from the French ci-ça, meaning this-that.
Left-right. Up-down. Earth-sky. But why, I asked myself, this need
for definitions? Better to feel the solid earth under your feet and
then your body being jolted into the sky.

Richard von Sturmer

A review

300 elaborations on koans collected by poet-philosopher Eihei Dōgen. Richard von Sturmer’s 300 poems form a mosaic of recognition epiphany memory physical anchors dreamkites with senses on alert with refractions reflections multiple lights.

“When my glasses become dirty, I reach for a cloth to wipe them
clean. When my mind becomes dull or distracted, I go outside and
study the clouds.”

from 19. ‘Ordinary Mind Is the Way’

Reading this collection is to savour the gift of slowness, a slowing down to absorb the world, the things we hear see smell feel, back in the past, here in the present. And yes, it becomes a form of slow travel, reading these 300 poems, strengthening feet on the ground, hearts and minds set to uplift. Yes. Reading this exquisitely crafted collection is to travel with roadmap still in the pocket, to fall upon egg-whisk clouds in the sky hot water bottle Buddha Plutarch Dante a washing machine coffee with a drop of milk. It is to travel to Bologna Sydney New York Venice Poor Knights Islands Honolulu Auckland Mount Wutai Yumen Gate.

For me it is neither source nor destination but the travel itself. I am falling into the utter joy of writing and reading as travel. As discovery surprise wonder. A world in ruins and a world in repair. Richard is translating the koan within his own time and place, his own narrative, and I find myself doing this I read.

And that is what poetry can do. This book. These poetic vibrations, these wisdoms. Openings. Autobiography. Meditations. Poetry as an intimately and intricately woven cloth of both experience and imagining. Personal. Resonant. Anchored and anchoring.

Publisher Erena Shingade has written an insightful introduction, and has produced a book that feels good in the hand. And as Anne Kennedy says on the book’s blurb, “I do believe Slender Volumes is von Sturmer’s most miraculous work”. Yes!

“Indeed. But best not to get your hopes up. Now that it autumn,
go into the back garden and search among the fallen leaves; there
are sure to be some gold ones among the brown.”

from 7. ‘Yangshan’s “It Is Not That There Is No Enlightenment”‘

The readings

1. ‘Qingyuang’s Whisk’

15. ‘Xuansha’s “One Bright Pearl”‘

48. ‘Xuansha’s Blank Letter’

Richard von Sturmer is a writer, performer and filmmaker who is well known for having written the lyrics to Blam Blam Blam’s “There is No Depression in New Zealand”. He is a teacher of Zen Buddhism and the co-founder of the Auckland Zen Centre. Slender Volumes is his tenth collection of writings.

Spoor Books page