Review

I’m giving this book props for the tremendous scholarship that went into it. But unless you are really passionate about haiku you are unlikely to get much from this collection. For one thing, haiku have a sort of necessary immediacy about them and as such they exist in a cultural context that is very specific. Many, I would say most, of the haiku in this collection simply don’t survive the transition from 17th century literary Japan to 21st century America. It may simply be that the translations could be better - I have no way of judging that. In any case, I found myself skimming the pages and by the end I was very glad to put the book down.

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