Vivid new translations of Basho's popular haiku, in a selected format
ideal for newcomers as well as fans long familiar with the Japanese
master.
Basho, the famously bohemian traveler through seventeenth-century Japan,
is a poet attuned to the natural world as well as humble human doings;
Piles of quilts/ snow on distant mountains/ I watch both, he writes. His
work captures both the profound loneliness of one observing mind and the
broad-ranging joy he finds in our connections to the larger community.
David Young, acclaimed translator and Knopf poet, writes in his
introduction to this selection, This poet's consciousness affiliates
itself with crickets, islands, monkeys, snowfalls, moonscapes, flowers,
trees, and ceremonies...Waking and sleeping, alone and in company, he
moves through the world, delighting in its details. Young's translations
are bright, alert, musically perfect, and rich in tenderness toward
their maker.