Matsuo Basho
Matsuo Basho
Matsuo Bashō, born 松尾 金作, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa, was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku. Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned; and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is justifiably famous in the West for his...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionPoet
CountryJapan
Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?
A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.
How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers
Old dark sleepy pool... Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!
Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.
Year's end, all corners of this floating world, swept.
Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.
Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.
Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old - / These fields and mountains!
Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest.
The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.
What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that is has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.
Learn the rules, and then forget them.
The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.