The Complete Haiku

Basho stands today as Japan's most renowned writer and one of its most revered. Wherever Japanese literature, poetry or Zen is studied, his oeuvre carries weight. Every new student of haiku soon learns that Basho was the greatest of the Old Japanese Masters. Yet despite his stature, Basho's complete haiku have not been collected under one cover - until now. To render his full body of work in English, Jane Reichhold, an American haiku poet and translator, dedicated over ten years of study. Dividing his creative output into seven periods of development, Reichhold frames each period with a decisive biographical sketch of the poet's travels, creative influences and personal triumphs & defeats. Scrupulously annotated notes accompany each poem and a glossary and three indexes fill out the volume. Original sumi-e ink drawings by artist Shiro Tsujimura complement the haiku throughout.