Last month a member of my critique group gifted me with a book, Haiku Harvest. She had found it at a garage sale. Its slim style reminded me o f another book in my collection, the first in the series, Japanese Haiku, translated by Peter Beilenson. In this edition, Harry Behn, a filmmaker and children’s author also helped with the translation.
Sharing a few from this cornucopia of haiku in the harvest season:
wild gees have eaten
all of my barley…
alas,
they are flying on!
-Yasui
whose dress could this be
thin on the leaf-gold
autumn screen?
only the wind
-Buson
brown leak from a tree
unknown clings
to a strange
green-spotted mushroom
-Basho
Behn was asked to complete this edition. In the first in the series Beilenson asked readers for “indulgence in the unorthodox typography” in order to accommodate the Japanese design on the page. Behn continues in this style. Of course, today’s haiku evolved its style immensely.
Poetry Friday is at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub. I have an original haiku at Deowriter.
Happy Reading.
MsMac
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