Home : Book details : Book description

Description of  Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho (World Literature in Translation)

This is the essential English edition of the complete poems of the eminent Japanese master of the haiku, Matsuo Bash. Matsuo Bash (16441694) is arguably the greatest figure in the history of Japanese literature and the master of the haiku. Bash: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bash offers in English a full picture of the haiku of Bash, 980 poems in all. Andrew Fitzsimons translation is the first to adhere strictly to form: all of the poems are translated following the syllabic count of the originals. This book also translates a number of Bashs headnotes to poems ignored by previous English-language translators. In Fitzsimons beautiful rendering, Bash is much more than a philosopher of the natural world and the leading exponent of a refined Japanese sensibility. He is also a poet of queer love and eroticism of the city as well as the country, the indoors and the outdoors, travel and staying put of lonesomeness as well as the desire to be alone. His poetry explores the full range of social experience in Edo Japan as he moved among friends and followers high and low, the elite and the demi-monde, the less fortunate: poor farmers, abandoned children, disregarded elders. Read more