The Essential Haiku brings together Robert
Hass's beautifully fresh translations of the three great
masters of the Japanese haiku tradition: Matsuo Basho
(1644-94), the ascetic and seeker, and the haiku poet
most familiar to English readers; Yosa Buson (1716-83),
the artist, a painter renowned for his visually
expressive poetry; and Kobayashi Issa (1[zasłonięte]763-18), the
humanist, whose haiku are known for their poignant or
ironic wit.
Each haiku master's section of the
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 the
poet, including journals and nature writing. Opening
with Hass's superb introductory essay on haiku, the 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 the reader.
The symbolism of the seasons and the 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 the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku 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 as well as an example of
spontaneity and Zen alertness to the new poets of
post-war America and Britain. Universal in its appeal,
Robert Hass's The Essential Haiku is the
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 the 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
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 level of these poems their attention to
the year, their ideas about it, the particular human
consciousness the poems reflect, Basho's profound
loneliness and sense of suffering, Buson's evenness of
temper, his love for the materials of art and for the
colour and shape of things, Issa's pathos and comedy and
anger' - Robert Hass.
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