Japanese Death Poems is a collection of the last poems written before dying by many Japanese poets, both Zen monks and practitioners of haiku. It also contains a lengthy introduction explaining Japanese attitudes towards poetry, death, and religion. While initial death poems were often written by warriors or samurai before battle, the custom eventually spread to others, and preparing a death poem became accepted practice -- several of the writers in this book have more than one.

Reading anthologies can be tedious work; this is even more true when the pieces are short, such as an anthology of 3-10 line poems, as Japanese Death Poems is. Not that Japanese Death Poems is particularly tedious, but it can be tough to maintain focus, especially when many of the poems are presented without any biographical details, other than an approximate date of death. While many of these poets are obscure, and it might be tedious to read " . . . was a monk for thirty years . . ." hundreds of times, it'd be worthwhile to have some background on all of these poets, especially since the biographical sketches (anecdotes, really) are quite interesting. Even if further anecdotes would be banal, I'd have preferred to have at least some insight into the lives of these poets. (or merchants, samurai, monks, etc)

I don't know how often I'll refer back to this, but it does cover at least two styles of poetry (tanka and haiku), has the work of dozens of poets, and gives some insight into Japanese culture, so I think it is worth having in my library.