A new collection of works that established the Haiku as a literary genre |
Haiku Before Haiku From the Renga Masters to Basho
Translated and with an introduction by Steven D. Carter
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"A brilliant book. These clear-water poems and their accompanying insightful commentaries enlighten ... Reading them, I am transported back across centuries to repeatedly savor the hokku's capacity to capture and illuminate the ongoing and inevitable fusion of our lives with the natural world." - Penny Harter, coauthor of The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku
While the rise of the charmingly simple, brilliantly evocative haiku is often associated with the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, the form had already flourished for more than four hundred years before Basho even began to write. These early poems, known as hokku, are identical to haiku in syllable count and structure but function differently as a genre.
Under the mastery of Basho, hokku first gained its modern independence. His talents contributed to the evolution of the style into the haiku beloved by so many poets around the world -- Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, and Billy Collins being notable devotees. Haiku Before Haiku presents 320 hokku composed between the thirteenth and early eighteenth centuries, from the poems of the courtier Nijo Yoshimoto to those of the genre's first "professional" master, Sogi, and his disciples. It features 20 masterpieces by Basho himself. Steven D. Carter introduces the history of haiku and its aesthetics, classifying these poems according to style and context.
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$22.50 $15.75 / £15.50 paper 176 pages
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