SOURCE: Miner, Earl. “Some Principal Renga Poets.” In Japanese Linked Poetry: An Account with Translations of Renga and Haikai Sequences, pp. 19-57. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.

In the following excerpt, Miner contrasts Yoshimoto's conservative views regarding what is appropriate for waka with his liberal attitudes concerning renga.

“Renga is not exhausted by the meaning of the stanza that precedes or of the stanza that follows.”

—Nijō Yoshimoto

The history of the development of renga from its short version in antiquity to its successors in haikai and haiku is also necessarily the history of a line of poets. Their ideals and their practice have given us our subject, which is still far from having been thoroughly studied. Fortunately, more and more becomes clear not only about the individual poets but also of how they thought.

It makes good sense to begin with the opinions of the greatest...