Review: If you're not trembling by the end of this book...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 25, 2013
Breath-taking and profound! I've been reading Basho & other Haiku masters for years, but Hirshfield in this essay has created an illumination of Basho much as Basho's haiku poems illuminate the moments & places where they came to rest.I found the translations exceptional, but greatly appreciated the inclusion of the Japanese. I was reading both the English translation & the Japanese original to myself aloud ... and found that the former was enhanced by the latter...as I'm sure Hirshfield intended.Much of what Hirshfield "accuses" Basho of doing, you also find in her work.In contextualizing Basho in his place & times she uses analogies with online gaming communities such as Dungeons & Dragons & more recently the rise of YouTube. I think you will find this exploration delightful & memorable & difficult to forget; hence helping you understand how haiku evolved from older forms of renga & tanka.If Hirshfield & I were friends, I would have said: Hey, Jane, find a way to add Cloud Computing to the analogy! And I don't doubt that she would have!I started reading this book around 3am, planning to read a few pages & off to sleep... but Hirshfield managed to make a must read cliff-hanger out of Basho's life & development as one of the world's greatest poets.So proceed with fair warning. This is one you may find yourself reading in one sitting.But the insights & images will haunt you.