Jane Hirshfield is the author of eight books of poetry, two essay collections, and four books collecting and co-translating the work of poets from the past, including The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu. Hirshfield’s honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been a visiting poet at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford, a UCSF neuroscience program, and the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Poetry, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, and eight editions of The Best American Poems. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Ono no Komachi (c. 825 – c. 900 AD) was a Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen — the six best waka poets of the early Heian period. She was renowned for her unusual beauty and counts among the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.

Portraits: Court Lady at Her Writing Table from the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 3 by Yashima Gakutei (1820s). Two from the series Stylish Parodies of the Six Poetic Immortals (Fūryū yatsushi rokkasen) by Chōbunsai Eishi (1790s). Book: “The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan” by Ono no Komachi (Author), Izumi Shikibu (Author), Jane Hirshfield (Translator), Mariko Aratani (Translator).