Grasses of Remembrance, the second volume of Edwin Cranston's monumental Waka Anthology, carries forward the story of Japanese court poetry through its Early Classical period, drawing from sources dating from the 890s to the 1080s. These two centuries saw the revival of the prestige of poetry in the native tongue after a century of official preference for versification in Chinese. An anthology of anthologies, Grasses of Remembrance draws copiously from the first four imperially ordered collections, Kokinshu, Gosenshu, Shuishu, and Goshuishu,...