The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa

Abstract

The Essential Haiku brings together Robert Hass's beautifully fresh translations of three great masters of Japanese haiku tradition: Matsuo Basho (1644-94), ascetic and seeker, and haiku poet most familiar to English readers; Yosa Buson (1716-83), artist, a painter renowned for his visually expressive poetry; and Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), humanist, whose haiku are known for their poignant or ironic wit. Each haiku master's section of book is prefaced with an eloquent and informative introduction by Robert Hass, followed by a selection of over 100 poems and then by other poetry or prose by poet, including journals and nature writing. Opening with Hass's superb introductory essay on haiku, book concludes with a section devoted to Basho's writings and conversations on poetry. The seventeen-syllable haiku form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Each haiku is a meditation, a centring, a crystalline moment of realisation. Reading them has a way of bringing about calm and peace within reader. The symbolism of seasons and Japanese habit of mind blend together in these poems to create an alchemy of reflection that is unsurpassed in literature. Infused by its great practitioners with spirit of Zen Buddhism, haiku served as an example of power of direct observation to first generation of American modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams as well as an example of spontaneity and Zen alertness to new poets of post-war America and Britain. Universal in its appeal, Robert Hass's The Essential Haiku is definitive introduction to haiku and its greatest poets, and has been a bestseller in America for twenty years. 'I know that for years I didn't see how deeply personal these poems were or, to say it another way, how much they have flavour - Basho might have said the scent - of particular human life, because I had been told and wanted to believe that haiku were never subjective. I think it was D.H. Lawrence who said soul can get to heaven in one leap but that, if it does, it leaves a demon in its place. Better to sink down through level of these poems - their attention to year, their ideas about it, particular human consciousness poems reflect, Basho's profound loneliness and sense of suffering, Buson's evenness of temper, his love for materials of art and for colour and shape of things, Issa's pathos and comedy and anger' - Robert Hass.