Under a canopy of pinkish white blossoms, on ground scattered with petals, we lay out our favorite foods. The cold of early spring has passed, but there is still a chill in the air. The scene is the same in Basho’s time as in ours. Shiru mo namasu mo soup, vinegar salad, and Strive to write poetry with that wholeness. A three-foot child would be five or six, so have little higher cortical function to circumvent the native spontaneity of the lower brain.Ħ Only this, apply your heart to what children do.Ĭhildren’s actions are whole, not divided by the endless conflict of adult concerns. That disease is “oldness,” conventionality, heaviness in writing. So much life and aliveness.ĥ “The skillful have a disease Let a three-foot child get the poem This single renku stanza combines the intriguing trio of child, whale, and shell we start with medium-size child, then move out to enormous whale, return to small shell in boy’s hand, then spread out to fill the area with sound, the whale swimming away, the adults running to their boats, the boy watching excitedly from his post. Poetry is the experience of the heart which goes and returns. Ordinary words take on extraordinary meanings and feelings.

The plain and ordinary words are “realized” through the thousand years of associations of Japanese life with cherry blossoms. He says absolutely nothing new about cherry blossoms or memories – instead he ‘sums up and conceals’ a thousand years of poetic expression on these flowers and the memories that pass from one cherry blossom season to the next. No complications: seven ordinary words with the most basic grammar possible in Japanese and likewise in English. This Basho haiku illustrates his mastery of the use of ordinary wordsīasho’s words are completely, utterly simple.

Years later, Basho put this idea in positive terms:ģ Poetry benefits from the realization of ordinary words In the letter to Biji is is this point of advice:Ģ Without a sense for how to use ordinary words, you will get mixed up in oldness. By “oldness” I believe he means what is “conventional, conforming to standards.”ġ Settling for standards and searching for reason places one in the middle grade of poets one who defies standards and forgets reason is the wizard on this path. Throughout this letter, Basho repeatedly condemns “oldness” in poetry he later said to his follower Doho: Oldness is the worst disease a poet can have. Three statements are from a letter Basho wrote in 1681 to his follower Biji. I offer this advice from the greatest of all haiku poets to all you folks writing haiku today. Translations and Commentary by Jeff Robbinsįrom the hundreds of passages I have translated from Basho’s letters to followers and from spoken word recorded by followers, I have culled 17 statements on how to produce a haiku. 17 statements from his letters and spoken word

Basho Haiku Analysis