Basho stands today as Japan’s most renowned writer, and one of the most revered. Wherever Japanese literature, poetry or Zen are studied, his oeuvre carries weight. Every new student of haiku quickly learns that Basho was the greatest of the Old Japanese Masters. Yet despite his stature, Basho’s complete haiku have not been collected into a single volume. Until now. To render the writer’s full body of work into English, Jane Reichhold, an American haiku poet and translator, dedicated over ten...
A compact collection of more than 500 poems from Jack Kerouac that reveal a lesser known but important side of his literary legacy “Above all, a haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi pastorella.”—Jack Kerouac Renowned for his groundbreaking Beat Generation novel On the Road, Jack Kerouac was also a master of the haiku, the three-line, seventeen-syllable Japanese poetic form. Following the tradition of...
Westerners have long been fascinated by haiku, the traditional Japanese verse form composed of seventeen syllables. These miniature masterpieces can express a dramatic scene or philosophical idea in a single line of verse. In this collection, haiku poet Yuzuru Miura has selected and translated poems by past masters like Basho and Buson, as well as haiku by contemporary poets. Fireflies, pheasants, a summer shower, winter snow, camellias - all the favorite haiku subjects are included among the on...
The first book to tackle office life with poetry, "Office Haiku" consists of witty haiku divided into chapters including "Monday Morning Suck," "Paper Cuts" Office Equiptment, and Other Maladies, "Existential Malaise," "Departmental Meetings," and "Anywhere but Here." Informed by a lifetime of work, James Rogauskas's haiku speak for themselves (and everyone else): Sitting at my desk; Proudly as any serf; On his scrap of dirt; "This has to go out"?; And I was waiting for desk; Fairies to type it....