Product Review

This celebration of what is perhaps the most influential of all poeticforms takes haiku back to its Japanese roots, beginning with poems bythe seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters Basho, Busson, andIssa, and going all the way up to the late twentieth century to providea survey of haiku through the centuries, in all its minimalist glory.The translators have balanced faithfulness to the Japanese with anappreciation of the unique spirit of each poem to create Englishversions that evoke the joy and wonder of the originals with the sameastonishing economy of language. An introduction by the translators andshort biographies of the poets are included. Reproductions of woodblockprints and paintings accompany the poems.