On Haiku

by Hiroaki Sato

Overview

Everything you want to know about haiku written by one of the foremost experts in the field and the “finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English” (Gary Snyder)

Who doesn’t love haiku? It is not only America’s most popular cultural import from Japan but also our most popular poetic form: instantly recognizable, more mobile than a sonnet, loved for its simplicity and compression, as well as its ease of composition. Haiku is an ancient literary form seemingly made for the Twittersphere—Jack Kerouac and Langston Hughes wrote them, Ezra Pound and the Imagists were inspired by them, Hallmark’s made millions off them, first-grade students across the country still learn to write them. But what really is a haiku? Where does the form originate? Who were the original Japanese poets who wrote them? And how has their work been translated into English over the years? The haiku form comes down to us today as a cliché: a three-line poem of 5-7-5 syllables. And yet its story is actually much more colorful and multifaceted. And of course to write a good one can be as difficult as writing a Homeric epic—or it can materialize in an instant of epic inspiration.

In On Haiku, Hiroaki Sato explores the many styles and genres of haiku on both sides of the Pacific, from the classical haiku of Basho, Issa, and Zen monks, to modern haiku about swimsuits and atomic bombs, to the haiku of famous American writers such as J. D. Salinger and Allen Ginsburg. As if conversing over beers in your favorite pub, Sato explains everything you wanted to know about the haiku in this endearing and pleasurable book, destined to be a classic in the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811227414
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	459,260
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Hiroaki Sato was born of Japanese parents in Taiwan in 1942; his family fled back to Japan at the end of WWII, and in 1968 he moved to New York, where he has lived ever since. He is the translator of many volumes of Japanese poetry and literature. The president of the Haiku Society of America from 1979 to 1981, Sato received the America PEN translation prize and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Translation Prize twice. He is the author of the books Legends of the Samurai, Snow in a Silver Bowl, and One Hundred Frogs, and from 2000 to 2017 wrote the monthly column “View from New York” for The Japan Times. New Directions also publishes his translation of The Iceland by Sakutaro Hagiwara.

Editorial Reviews

09/24/2018
In this collection of essays and talks from the past 25 years, translator and critic Sato (Snow in a Silver Bowl) exhaustively, and sometimes exhaustingly, tells all about haiku. Addressing the historical tradition, poetic form, and craft of haiku, the essays also perform close readings of specific examples, such as the celebrated 17th-century poet Matsuo Basho’s frog haiku, of which Sato once collected 140 different English translations. Roving further afield, Sato uses haiku to illuminate some of the difficulties encountered in Japanese-to-English translation (such as the absence of a Japanese equivalent to English’s plural s.) At the book’s most rewarding, it situates haiku as part of a larger story, explaining how the modern conception of haiku as a tiny, enigmatically philosophical poem represents a strange cropping of the original Japanese form, which served merely as the brief opening to a much longer poem composed as part of elaborate court rituals, and often incorporated humor and in-jokes. But many of the best insights are recycled across the essays, since they weren’t originally written to be read in one collection, and the prose is prone to distracting tangents. Individually, the essays are fascinating, reflecting Sato’s unimpeachable expertise in his subject. Unfortunately, read as a whole, they verge on the unwieldy and redundant. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"The pre-eminent translator of Japanese poetry in our time...possessed of an unfiltered enthusiasm and spontaneity."

London Review of Books - August Kleinzahler

"Over the last four decades, English-speaking aficionados of modern Japanese literature have delighted in the numerous translations, both of prose and poetry, undertaken by the masterful hand of translator, essayist, and poet Hiroaki Sato."

Meera Viswanathan

"This combination of history and criticism tells of the haiku, one of poetry’s most simple and beloved forms. Sato gives a complete picture of the form’s journey and significance."

World Literature Today

"Sato's extraordinary collection of essays is at once a literary history, a scrupulous examination of the vicissitudes of translation, a discussion of haiku in America, and a series of introductions to lesser- known masters. Sato conveys encyclopedic knowledge in a lively, modest, occasionally self-deprecating tone, busting myths along the way.  An expert illumination of a poetic form, to read and reread."

Booklist (starred) - Michael Autrey