Graphic by The Lawrenceville School
I bought a book of poetry for a young friend who is a budding poet just starting to make clever verses that rhyme. Poetry Is Not a Luxury has enough short poems to pique his interest in works that don't necessarily rhyme but are excellent views into the poets' minds.
Along the way, I decided to buy myself a book of poems as well.
On Love and Barley -Haiku of Basho, Jan. 7, 1986, Penguin Classics. 93 pages with 253 haiku poems.
Description: Basho, one of the greatest of Japanese poets and the master of haiku, was also a Buddhist monk and a life-long traveller. His poems combine 'karumi', or lightness of touch, with the Zen ideal of oneness with creation.
Each poem evokes the natural world - the cherry blossom, the leaping frog, the summer moon or the winter snow - suggesting the smallness of human life in comparison to the vastness and drama of nature.
Basho himself enjoyed solitude and a life free from possessions. His haiku are the work of an observant eye and a meditative mind.
Excerpts from the book:
8
Spring night,
cherry-
blossom dawn.
12
Spring rain -
under trees
a crystal stream
I will read Basho's haiku, 253 of them in this collection, whenever I'm in the mood for short, poetic observations of nature.
Are you planning to read any poetry this month?
