Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa edited by Robert Hass




     I LOVE poetry! I can’t write it to save my life, but I love to read it. I especially love Haiku. They’re like little photographs, only deeper and fuller in that I feel I can smell and touch the atmosphere they create. 

     The Haiku form, according to this book, evolved in Japan from both Japanese and Chinese poetry. It started as something quite different from what we now know it as. This book contains histories of and haikus by three famous poets: Basho, Buson and Issa. Both Buson and Issa lived after and studied the works of Basho.

    I think I like Basho best, but I really enjoy the haikus of all three poets. This is my favorite book of poetry, although I love many others too. This collection is easy to read and full of information about the haiku, these three poets, the difficulties of translation, further reading, the prose of all three poets, and more. It’s an extremely evocative book, making medieval Japan come alive in the reader’s imagination. I feel steeped in beauty, freshness  and the world of nature every time I read this book. Highly recommended.

Bad language: Be aware that a few of these poems contain earthy language—haikus deal largely with nature, and nature defecates, urinates, copulates and is otherwise “natural”. Only 2 or 3 of these haikus have a little of this and there are limited reference to such things in some of the prose. I could wish that the translator had chosen more euphemistic words for some of these actions, but I trust he chose as he thought best. In any case, it doesn’t subtract from the transporting language of the vast majority of the prose and poetry in this book.
Sex: see the caution above

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