If you are the author of a country’s two most beloved poems, you have officially made it. And if that country happens to be Japan—where poetry is a fundamental part of the nation’s fabric—you’ve made it twice over. You’re like Shakespeare and The Stones. This is the case for Matsuo Bashō, whose influence within Japan (and beyond) is so great, it is impossible to map. Bashō (1644-1694) is more contemporary than many people imagine. He was born the same year Descartes penned Cogito ergo sum, and several years after the death of Shakespeare. Thus, Bashō, at least chronologically, is a […]
Feeling Through the Open Space: ‘Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō’
by Dean Rader
