"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 the flavor–Bashō 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 the 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 the levels of these poems–their attention to the yeaer, their ideas about it, the particular human consciousness the poems reflects, Bashō's profound loneliness and sense of suffering, Buson's evenness of temper, Issa's pathos and comedy and anger." - Robert Hass, from the Introduction
American readers have been fascinated, since their exposure to Japanese culture late in the nineteenth century, with the brief Japanese poem called the hokku or haiku. The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Infused by its great practitioners with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku has served as an example of the power of direct observation to the first generation of American modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and also as an example of spontaneity and Zen alertness to the new poets of the 1950's.
This definite collection brings together in fresh translations by an American poet the essential poems of the three greatest masters: Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century; Yosa Buson in the eighteenth century; and Kobayashi Issa in the early nineteenth century. Robert Haas has written a lively and informed introduction, provided brief examples by each poet of their work in the halibun, or poetic prose form, and included informal notes to the poems. This is a useful and inspiring addition to The Essential Poets series.
