Basho: The Complete Haiku

Basho: The Complete Haiku (Kodan­sha) collects (apparently for the first time in one volume) all of the haiku written by Matsuo Basho, the revered Zen poet of seventeenth-century Japan. The Penguin edition of Basho’s travel sketches (The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches) has long been a favourite of mine, and this volume makes a wonderful companion piece.

The translator, Jane Reichhold, makes no attempt to wrench the English version of these haiku into the North American standard 5–7–5 ­syllable pattern (thankfully, in my opinion), and there will undoubtedly be nitpickers who debate the merits of her translation, but she spent ten years on the project of translating and annotating all 1,012 haiku, and Basho: The Complete Haiku must be said to be the definitive English-language edition of this work.

All those who aspire to fame (if not fortune) through the intermittent Geist Haiku Night in Canada invitational could do far worse than to study this book.

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This is a wonderful book and

This is a wonderful book and one that I dip into on an almost daily basis. I cannot recommend it too highly for all lovers of poetry.

Robin more than 12 years ago

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