Bashō in America

Prose quotations of Matsuo Bashō, and original translations and quotations by translator/poet Sam Hamill are from Narrow Road to the Interior published by Shambhala Publications, Inc. and are reprinted with permission of the publisher.  ©1998 by Sam Hamill.

The author wishes to thank many people who assisted in the preparation of this manuscript,
including Madeline Zulauf, who patiently listened to all of these haiku on the days they were written, and who provided the images for the covers of this book.   Herb and Laurel Bergman rented us their “abode of illusion” on an island in Lake George where most of these poems were born.  The County College of Morris provided a much-needed sabbatical for the purpose of writing my poetry and working on some translations.  Without that gift of one year, this book would have been impossible.  The late William Higginson’s and his widow poet Penny Harter’s book The Haiku Handbook, Robert Hass’s The Essential Haiku, and Gene Myer’s gift to me of Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology were all indispensible studies before I ever attempted to create my first haiku.  I would like to thank my writing professors from long ago—Katherine Kressman Taylor and John Clarke at Gettysburg College in the tumultuous 1960’s, and Philip Appleman, Samuel Yellen, Donald Gray, and Philip B. Daghlian at Indiana University in the early 1970’s.  Deborah Cowan and Patricia Crowell graciously guided the Academy of American Poets’ Marion Zulauf Poetry Prize at Gettysburg College for decades, for which I am extremely grateful.  My friend Marvin Silbersher has been foremost in encouraging me to write my poetry either on the phone or in our impromptu poetry workshops at the Ware House. And of course, Matsuo Bashō, the master of the form, who lived in his own “abode of illusion” at Lake Biwa, and who made a thousand mile journey recorded in Narrow Road to the Interior—he is the true inspiration for Bashō in America.

once more this afternoon
    another thunder shower
        scatters butterflies

                heavy summer rain
                    punishes the roof
                        washing away sleep

                                       how foolish!    
                                        to think I am
                                            bashō!

maracas at night
    (cha cha cha) (cha cha cha cha)
        august katydids

                    great horned owl loudly
                        blesses    late summer love songs
                            katydids proposing

                                spider on my pants
                                    which way 
                                        are you going?