Jane Reichhold

I'm usually not much for writing guides, but this one was much more enjoyable, and far less uptight about "true" haiku than I expected it to be. A good conversation partner for William Higginson's Haiku Handbook.

This complete translation is apparently the work of an enthusiast amateur poet collaborating with a Japanese translator. A comparison with a selection translated by Hiroaki Sato that I have at hand suggests that the quality is mostly fine. Sato's renditions tend to be more energetic and clear-cut, for better or worse.

Footnotes are sporadic and curiously lopsided, ranging from botanical notes and biographical remarks to sudden interpretative explanations of entire poems. Maybe those were the show more translator's favorites?

The edition is bilingual with the original text in one line followed by its romaji transcription and translation in five lines each. I spotted some typos (and inconsistent word spacing) in the transcription; my understanding of Classical Japanese is too rudimentary to be sure the original is Oll Korrect. Gotta be careful using this as CJ study material.

Quality issues notwithstanding, getting to read all of the poems in their original order reveals a constant play of motifs and echoes that vanishes in a selection, and for that alone this edition is worthy reading. show less

Traditional haiku include a word, called kigo, that defines the poem's season. There are many Japanese kigo dictionaries, including hundreds of season-appropriate words. For example, "snow" defines winter, "cherry blossoms" are associated with spring. Up to now, English has not had an equivalent kigo dictionary, and Jane Reichhold's collection fills a large gap. She provides not only words grouped by season, but examples that will be useful to English-language haiku poets at all levels.

Haiku hardly explained and guided, needs some updates but its good to know that this can be poetry too.