Aitken Roshi is considered by many the dean of American Zen masters. In this book he combines his Zen insight with his university training in liturature to explain Basho's poetry. The book should be read by anyone interested in Zen, and perhaps even more by anyone interested in poetry or literary criticism, since it shows what a wise person can do improve our reading of poetry. If you love Basho or haiku in general, then this book is a must have.

It is terrible that this book is out of print.

A ZEN WAVE : Basho's Haiku and Zen. Translated by Robert Aitken. 192 pp. New York and Tokyo : Weatherhill, 1978 and Reissued.

All of us, perhaps, need a bit of help when starting to read haiku. As the shortest of all verse forms, with its mere seventeen syllables, it doesn't look like much of a poem at all to the uninitiated, and they may wonder what the fuss is all about.

In 'A Zen Wave,' Robert Aitken, who is a noted American Zenist and competent in Japanese, has had the extremely useful idea of compiling a small anthology of haiku by Basho (1644-1694), and providing each haiku with its own full commentary. After finishing the book, readers will have acquired a background in both haiku and Zen, and will be able to further explore haiku by themselves in an informed way.

In his brief 5-page Introduction Aitken writes:

"... the heart of Basho's haiku is the very foundation of human perception of things - mind itself. Operating superficially, the mind is random in its activity and stale in its insights and images. With practice and experience, however, it is recognized as the empty infinity of the universe and of the self" (pages 18-19).

This statement may gain in meaning if we set it alongside an observation made the great Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253), who wrote:

"Conveying the self to the myriad things to authenticate them is delusion; the myriad things advancing to authenticate the self is enlightenment" (Tr., F. H. Cook, 'Sounds of Valley Streams,' page 66).

The haiku poet is a person who has 'emptied' himself or herself, who has created a space, an "empty infinity" or 'openness,' in which the myriad things can come forward and declare themselves. Haiku capture those moments, and the greatest haiku present us with "the vital experience of the thing itself" (Aitken, page 21). Haiku, therefore, are not so much words about things; they aim rather to present us with a true perception of the thing itself.

'A Zen Wave' presents us with a total of twenty-six of Basho's haiku. For each of them we are given Aitken's translation, the romanized Japanese of the original, and its literal word-by-word translation. Then follow a few words on THE FORM, which in turn are followed by Aitken's very full COMMENTARY. These commentaries are enriched by the inclusion of many other poems, both Japanese and Chinese. The book, which is illustrated with eight photographs, is rounded out with a Glossary of Selected Terms, a table of Japanese Equivalents of Chinese Names, and a short section of Notes giving details of sources.

Here, with my slash marks to indicate line breaks, is how Aitken has handled the first haiku, one of Basho's most famous:

"The old pond; / A frog jumps in - / The sound of the water.

Furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto

Old pond! / frog jumps in / water of sound" (page 25).

Simple though it may seem, we should note that Basho had to work very hard to attain the state of 'openness' that we find in this poem. It was written when he was forty-two years old after many years of effort, and it marks his coming of age as a mature poet. Aitken comments: "Basho presents his own mind as this timeless, endless pond, serene and potent" (page 26).

Ideally haiku should be like a gentle explosion in the mind. Better still, they are the frog which plops into the pond of our mind, and sets up an ever-widening series of ripples, concentric circles which as they spread outwards to embrace more and more, end up by bringing the whole cosmos into view.

What is the "old pond"? Basho's mind and your mind certainly. But what else? Could it be the Unborn Buddha Mind which we all share? And what about the frog? Is it 'just a frog'? Or is it something infinitely precious? As for the "sound" - this too should be allowed to work on one's sensibility, for it will suggest different things to different readers.

There is much excellent commentary in this book, and many other fine haiku. A particular favorite of mine deals with a tiny plant, the nazuna or Sheperd's Purse, which reads:

"When I look carefully - / Nazuna is blooming / Beneath the hedge (page 74).

Five pages of Aitken's interesting comment follow the poem, which include a quotation from the famous Zen scholar, D. T. Suzuki, who wrote of the nazuna, a plant which many would dismiss as 'just a weed' :

"We are blatantly given up to the demonstration of self-conceit, self-delusion, and unashamed arrogance. We do not seem now to cherish any such feelings as inspired Basho to notice the flowering nazuna plant. . . . (page 75).

Aitken feels that "Basho is teaching us religion with his nazuna haiku," and how the denial of the nazuna is, as Suzuki points out, "self-delusion" (page 75), and I quite agree. One of the more important things we have to learn from haiku is the importance of the ordinary - because, in fact, nothing is ordinary, and we should learn to distrust the word 'just.'

For readers of Aitken's book whose appetite has been whetted, there are many other books of haiku. One particular work I can strongly recommend (if you can find it), and which Aitken himself regarded highly, is the 4-volume 'Haiku' by R. H. Blyth, volumes which like Aitken's are also bilingual, rich in commentary, and illustrated. I can't resist ending with one of my favorites by another famous haiku poet, Buson (1715-1783), from Blyth Volume 4 'Autumn - Winter' (page 224):

"The drizzling winter rain / Quietly soaks / The roots of the camphor tree."

Allow these words to quietly penetrate your sensibility, just as the rain quietly soaks the roots of the camphor tree.

Are we wise to dismiss such events as being beneath our notice because merely 'ordinary'? Or should we rather, like the haiku poets, get self out of the way and allow the myriad things to come forward and disclose themselves, and in authenticating themselves authenticate us?

Originally presented as Zen talks, Robert Aitken's warmly informed commentaries on Basho's haiku confound our expectations for a nullifying Zen and the experience of haiku as being "pecked to death by doves."

This was the first time that I have read Basho's Narrow Road to Oku, snd I enjoyed it a great deal. Actually I read it twice this week. The first time I read through it I tried to read it without using the notes. I was lazy, so it came out that I really didn't enjoy what I was reading because I really didn't know what was going on throughout most of the book, so I read it again using the notes, and I got much more out of it. The annotations are on the left page while the actual text is on the right page, so there is no flipping to the back of the book every time that you need to look up something. There are endnotes that give more information about the haiku Basho writes. This is a very cool book, that gives the reader a glimpse at the literary world of japan back during the 17th century.

This is a very well translated and annotated edition of this great work.

[Note: This review appeared July 22, 1999, in the Seattle Weekly and is available online at http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9929/books-lightfoot.shtml]

The Essential Basho, translated by Sam Hamill. Shambhala, $25 No wonder dreams of journeys are so often associated with death. We travel to leave our lives behind - the familiar workaday parts, anyway - hoping to arrive in a Paradise where our eyes, ears, tongues, maybe even our hearts, will be startled awake. What we really want is a new self, but what we often get is more stuff -samples of a regional cuisine, eyefuls of great art, tidbits about Kafka's life in Prague, opinions, trinkets. Traveling becomes grazing on a global scale.

A different pathway opens up in Sam Hamill's newest collection of translations, The Essential Basho. Here for the first time in a single volume is the essence of Basho's work: four travel narratives, including the best-known "Narrow Road to the Interior," and 250 haiku returning us home to a dailiness transformed by awareness and attention. Whether the poet is on the road or behind his own brushwood gate he seeks, instead of new acquisitions or excitements, an honest encounter between world and mind. These two entities were never separate to begin with. So although Basho's travelogues seem to record his treks on foot through 17th-century Japan, they're actually journeys into his own true nature, the heartland within, where self and circumstances are one.

"Very early on the twenty-seventh morning of the third moon, under a predawn haze, transparent moon barely visible, mount Fuji just a shadow, I set out under the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka. When would I see them again? A few old friends had gathered in the night and followed along far enough to see me off from the boat' I felt three thousand miles rushing through my heart, the whole world only a dream. I saw it through farewell tears.

"Spring passes / and the birds cry out - tears / in the eyes of fishes.

"With these first words from my brush, I started. Those who remain behind watch the shadow of a traveler's back disappear."

Carrying just a few necessities along with friends' farewell presents, which he can't bear to part with, Basho lets each event on the way speak the language of its particular life. At a farm he asks directions, but they're so complicated the farmer just lends Basho his horse ("'He knows the road. When he stops, get off, and he'll come back alone.'") The horse takes Basho to a village and then turns around, a gift from the poet tied to his saddle. Farther on, Basho observes peasants wearing black formal hats for ancient rites, speaks with prostitutes on a pilgrimage, sadly leaves to his fate a child abandoned by his parents, retreats from a three-day storm into a shack: Eaten alive by / lice and fleas - now the horse / beside my pillow pees.

At a mountain temple "I crawled among boulders to make my bows at shrines. The silence was profound. I sat, feeling my heart begin to open." Elsewhere, hearing distant villagers clap wooden noisemakers to scare deer from their fields, he feels "the utter aloneness of autumn." A stranger asks for a poem ("'Something beautiful, please'") and Basho writes a verse about the cuckoo's cry that arrives, just then, from across a field.

Basho's words flow spontaneously out of each moment lived. Instead of giving us tours or mementos of the world, he helps us open to its presences and discover who we are. Through his haiku we sense the wholeness and sufficiency of an early frost, an eggplant seed, a hangover, "Mr. Seagull," a nest of mice, a bean-floured rice ball, tears in the eyes of fishes, and ourselves, awake and alive again. Hamill frames "The Essential Basho" with essays on Basho's life and work that are scholarly enough to educate a student of haiku or Japanese culture and lively enough to engage any reader. Their depth and ease testify to the virtuosity Hamill has achieved as Editor of Copper Canyon Press, Director of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, author of over thirty books, and translator of poetry in several languages. Travelers like me have carried around the world his pocket-size Basho ("Narrow Road to the Interior," now out of print) until it's tattered. We'll treasure the fine new volume silkily sleeved in Hokusai's portrait of the poet on the road again.

As a casual and thorough student of Basho and the Japanese poetic forms of haiku, haibun and renga I've come to believe that Sam Hamill's translations are the best ever. Hamill, as a respected poet in the English language himself, translates the Japanese of Basho into an American English that literally sings.His translation of the opening lines of "Narrow Road to the Interior," included in this volume, is a classic Basho, and classic Hamill: "The moon and the sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home." I have carried Hamill's translation of "Narrow Road" with me for years. To have "The Essential Basho" now on my shelf is an event to celebrate.

One hundred frogs is a terrific look at just how differently poets can make a work their own. By writing a hundred different versions of "Frog Jumps / Into pond / sound of water" these poets demonstrate the diversity versions of the same poem can yield.

Bring on the "Another Hundred Frogs" sequel - I can't get enough of these!

"A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things." (R. H. Blyth)

In this small book, Hiroaki Sato has put together more than 100 translations of the most famous haiku by the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho (1644-94). He has added a ten-page introduction to the work of Matsuo Basho and his most famous poem "Old Pond" which, in one of the most literal translations, reads as follows:

Fu-ru (old) i-ke (pond) ya, ka-wa-zu (frog) to-bi-ko-mu (jumping into) mi-zu (water) no o-to (sound) [transl. Fumiko Saisho]

"One Hundred Frogs" illustrates how many riches can be mined from a single poem, and how much fun it can be to try to capture the essence of a poem in another language. It also teaches a lesson in humility: It is just as impossible to translate poetry unchanged from one language to another as it is impossible to translate anything unchanged from "reality" into language. Ironically, a haiku tries just that. The art of writing haikus is strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. The mind of a Zen master, it is said, is like a mirror: it reflects reality "as it is" and remains unmoved. A haiku, ideally, reflects reality like a mirror. This is an impossible task, of course. The haiku does not reflect reality, it reflects the poet's interpretation of reality. In this sense, the translations in this book are interpretations of interpretations of reality.

The translators approach the poem "Old Pond" with quite different attitudes. Some take a serious approach and, for example, try to retain the 5-7-5-syllables structure of the haiku: "The old pond, yes, and / A frog is jumping into / The water, and splash." [G.S. Fraser], or "The silent old pond / a mirror of ancient calm, / a frog-leaps-in splash" [Dion O'Donnol]. The latter translation also tries to highlight the tension between silence/calm and sound/movement that is built into the poem. In this context, it is interesting to know that Zen Buddhism does not interpret silence and sound as opposites but as extreme expressions of a unique, indivisible reality - like the north pole and south pole of a magnetized stick: opposites, yet parts of one object. There is no sound without silence. There is no silence without sound. My favorite "serious" translation is the version by Cid Corman, a contemporary American poet: "old pond / frog leaping / splash". After thinking so much about how to translate the poem, this is a refreshingly simple solution. In my opinion, it comes closest to the Zen spirit of the poem. And "splash" appears to be the most reasonable way to solve the question of what is "the water's sound"?

Other translators take a more light-hearted look. Bernard Lionel Einbond translates: "Antic pond - / frantic frog jumps in - / gigantic sound." Antic-frantic-gigantic is a quite amusing caricature of the seriousness of other translations. Then there is a sonnet version and a limerick version. The limerick goes: "There once was a curious frog / who sat by a pond on a log / And to see what resulted, / In the pond catapulted / With a water-noise heard around the bog."

And others again are even more playful. One George M. Young, Jr., contributed what he claimed was a yellowed newspaper clipping from his file: "MAFIA HIT MAN POET: NOTE FOUND PINNED TO LAPEL OF DROWNED VICTIM'S DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT!!! 'Dere wasa dis frogg / Gone jumpa offa da logg / Now he inna bogg.' - Anonymous." It is one of my favorites because of its irreverence for the importance of Zen. An attitude, by the way, that is very much in the spirit of Zen.

The most playful translation of the poem, however, is the one that the reader can compose himself by flipping the pages of the book with his thumb: what emerges is the visual image of an ink-painted frog jumping into a pool. Without a sound. Ironic. Funny. Apt.

This is a great book just to browse at random. The interpretations given after each haiku are an interesting twist. Reading them after letting the haiku soak in is somewhat like sharing the poems with other enthusiasts. Some of them also shed a fascinating light on the circumstances of their composition and Basho's attitudes. And if haiku just makes you scratch your head, the remarks will show you interesting ways of looking at each one. Ueda helpfully adds biographical sketches between sections to put the poems into context and provides the original Japanese and word for word translations, and although I have found better translations of individual poems, his are adequate at least and often elegant. Basho of course is great, and this is the perfect book to linger over when you're in a thoughtful mood.

This delightful little book deserves a brief review, some stars. I read it twenty-five years ago, and can remember the experience with great clarity (which I can only say of a select few books). I didn't have high expectations when I picked it up, but found it surpisingly exciting and deeply satisfying - and grew to care for the book, and Matsuo Basho, long before I was done. If you have an interest in Basho or haiku poetry, this is a marvellous and friendly guide. As well as being a very readable biography of the man, it's also an excellent means of understanding and appreciating the poetry he wrote - what it was, why he wrote it, with whom, what they accomplished, and why it matters. And it's written with love as well as with knowledge. It's not dry at all. Ueda later compiled "Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku With Commentary", which is a great collection if you want to go in deeper. But start here.

Narrow Road to the Interior and other writings
by Matsuo Basho
translated by Sam Hamill

This is the most complete collection of Basho's writings translated into English available in a single volume. Aficionados of Japanese culture keen on exploring the haiku literature would be hard-pressed to find a better book to start with.

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) lived during the Genroku period in Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate had unified the country and it was a time of relative peace, which allowed those so inclined a freedom of travel not usual in many periods of Japanese history. Basho was so inclined. At the age of forty his restless feet led him on several walking tours of Japan, and he left behind collected impressions of these journeys in both prose and haiku.

Thoroughly versed in the Chinese and Japanese poetic traditions prevalent among the literati of his time, Basho was also an ardent disciple of Zen. He devoted his life to refining, clarifying, and simplifying his poetry. In the brief haiku form he found the perfect vehicle through which to realize his poetic ideals, and the poems he wrote have inspired and captivated readers and poets throughout the world with their elegance, insight, and simple brilliance.

This volume collects together four travelogues (Narrow Road to the Interior, Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones, The Knapsack Notebook, and Sarashina Travelogue) and over 250 of Basho's haiku. The translator has provided an introductory essay and an afterward revealing many aspects of Basho's life, work, and the haiku form itself. Also included are a chronology of Basho's life, a map detailing his journeys, and a bibliography.

Sam Hamill's translation is marvelously clear and uncluttered, and allows the glow of Basho's awareness to somehow peek through the words in his poems. The book itself is a Shambala edition, and so quite beautiful: printed on high-quality paper in a gorgeous typeface with lovely endpapers. This book is a gem.

Your song caresses
the depths of loneliness,
high mountain bird.

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) is certainly the best-known haiku poet of all time, even though he never heard the word "haiku". What he did do, in his own time, was (a) write and teach the writing of "haikai no renga", the popular style of linked, collaborative poetry of his time, (b) collect the largest number of followers (or "disciples") of any poet of his day, (c) write a number of short prose pieces with short verses he called hokku (haibun), (d) write a number of independent hokku (which we now call "haiku"), and (e) write several travel diaries, the last of which, "Narrow Road of the Interior" goes by a number of titles in English and is one of the great masterpieces of world literature.

You can find out about all this from other books. However, in Professor Shirane's book, you will find out more: Basho was not the only person doing these things during his lifetime. And although nobody is likely to say that Basho was not the most important poet of his day, he was definitely influenced in all his work by the trends of the time. When funny verses were the vogue, early in his career, he wrote funny verses. When Chinese poetry became a major influence on the poetry scene, his writings reflected his own rich knowledge of that Chinese heritage. When other poets started advocating a "lighter" style, more directly concerned with the things of daily life, Basho took up "lightness" as an important element of his art.

Basho's uniqueness does not lie in his unique type of poetry, but in his great ability to ride the wave of fashion in a common type of poetry and make something rich and lasting from it. By placing Basho and his work--with many fine translations--in the context of his own day and his own culture, Prof. Shirane gives us a deeper, richer Basho than we knew before. And, he helps us grasp some basics of Japanese culture, and of haiku, that we probably missed in other books on the subject.

This book features versions of about one hundred poems by each of three masters in haiku tradition, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), Yosa Buson (1716-1783), and Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827). The introduction tells us that according to Japanese literary criticism, these three men represent three types of the poet. Basho is seen as the ascetic and seeker, Buson the artist, and Issa the humanist. The differences in each poet's style can be seen at a glance. This book contains interesting short biographies of each of the men as well as some of their prose and notes on the poems. There are a few interesting black and white illustrations throughout the book including some by Yosa Buson himself. The introduction by Robert Hass is a superb introduction to haiku itself.
These beautiful three line poems, located in Nature with their implied Buddhist reflection are each a meditation, a centering, and a crystalline moment of realization. Reading them has a way of bringing about calm and peace within the reader. The symbolism of the seasons and the Japanese habit of mind blend together in these poems to create an alchemy of reflection that is unsurpassed in literature. The exquisite skill of these three masters make their subject matter seem completely organic, without artifice. Each poem contains a unique "Ah!" experience because they pierce directly to the soul, activating the human capacity for seeing with a still mind and an observing heart.
If you are new to haiku this is a wonderful compendium of the best of the genre. If you are already a lover of haiku this book is a delightfully compact, essential package, a real treasure you are sure to enjoy again and again.

are even more wonderful/than cormorants" (Issa)

Not being a speaker/reader of japanese, I can't vouch for the fidelity or accuracy of the translations, but I will say this: they are wonderfully true to the essence of haiku, and if you are possessed of a temperament which gets off on this sort of thing, this book will find a happy place in your life (my own copy resides in the bathroom). The biographical pieces and the excerpts from the respective poets' prose works which bookend the 3 haiku selections will provide an affable sense of place and context for the reader unfamiliar with Asian literature, and Hass' simultaneoous understanding of/enthusiasm for his subject matter, and his empathy with the mores and wherefores of the contemporary Occidental reader, are on par with Paul Reps' "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" (not to mention John Cage's "Indeterminacy"!)

If you can forget their age for long enough to read through them a few times, these poems might remind you that everything starts in the banality of things around us, which is really never very banal at all. What keeps us from really looking around ourselves IS ourselves. Everything else is just mosquitoes, grass, wind, tables, the moon, etc. And that is the very simple secret of mind and matter. But hey, come to your own conclusions -- I'm no Zen master, and the only even remotely Zen aspect of this review is that it is now over.

This book is a collection of haiku by three great Japanese masters- Basho, Buson and Issa who all lived between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries.

The book is divided into four sections, one on each master, followed by a section containing Basho's thoughts on haiku in general. Each of the first three sections starts with a brief but good introduction to the master followed by the translations of his haiku. Each section concludes with other pieces of writing (prose and haiku) by the poet. This helps to give a picture of the person behind the poem and some idea of the life and times that the poet lived in. Not being familiar with life in Japan from a few centuries ago, I found this very helpful in getting a better understanding of the context in which the poems are set.

There are notes at the back which explain some of the nuances and anything significant one has to know about certain Haiku. It helps to keep this in mind when reading the haiku. The fourth section in the book "Basho on Poetry" is a joy to read, and captures the spirit of Haiku. Each sentence here is worth preserving! There is also a list of books for further reading which I found useful.

Overall, this book is a good addition to the library, whether one is interested in writing Haiku or not.

Although Henderson's book is out-of-print (originally published in 1958), and his translations are stylistically out-of-date (i.e., rhymed English haiku), this is an essential, pocket-sized anthology. Henderson intersperses his chronological presentation of haiku, in both transliterized Japanese (romaji) with English translation, by major historical masters with analysis throughout. I am on my second paperback -- the first fell apart from constant use!

I have rarely encountered better translations of Haiku. Henderson brought the extended meanings of the words across. Double and triple entendres, startling juxtapositions, contextual clues, everything. These are not mere literal translations--they work on multiple levels to extend the meaning of the poetry, to reflect the possible readings by literate Japanese readers.

Poetic translation is an art that requires deep understanding of two languages, poetic heritages, and metaphorical/imagistic libraries. Henderson's translations are unique in their quality.