Thanks to Bob Hass, I’m
reading the haiku masters
of Japan — Basho,
Buson and Issa —
in one essential book: The
Essential Haiku,
published by Ecco,
with smart intro and useful
notes by Mr. Hass.
Examples follow.
(Translators do not observe
strict syllabic count).
Here is Basho as
rendered by B. Watson in
fifteen syllables:
“It’s not like anything
they compare it to —
the summer moon.”
And now for Buson,
trans. by Yuki Sawa and
Edith M. Shiffert:
“I go,
you stay;
two autumns.”
Issa, the last of
the three, wrote the following
(trans. Robert Huey):
“Children imitating cormorants
are even more wonderful
than cormorants.”
This post went up ten
years back and ended with my
three-words-in-three-lines
New York translation
of Basho’s justly famous
haiku of the frog:
Pond.
Frog.
Splash.
— DL
Go to Source
Author: The Best American Poetry
