Basho

A lavish collector’s edition of the complete poems of eminent Japanese master of the haiku, Matsuo Basho—?with a new index that contains the full Japanese text of the original poems. Matsuo Basho (1644–1694) is arguably the greatest figure in the history of Japanese literature and the master of the haiku. Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho offers in English a full picture of the haiku of Basho, 980 poems in all.   In Fitzsimons’s beautiful rendering, Basho is much more than a philosopher of the natural world and the leading exponent of a refined Japanese sensibility. He is also a poet of queer love and eroticism; of the city as well as the country, the indoors and the outdoors, travel and staying put; of lonesomeness as well as the desire to be alone. Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho reveals how this work speaks to our concerns today as much as it captures a Japan emerging from the Middle Ages. For dedicated scholars and those coming upon Basho for the first time, this beautiful collector’s edition of Fitzsimons’s elegant award-winning translation, with the original Japanese (including kanji, hiragana, and katakana), allows readers to enjoy these works in all their glory.

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