Haiku may be the most popular and widely recognized poetic form in the world. In just three lines, a great haiku presents a crystalline moment of image, emotion, and awareness. Collected here are over two hundred of the best haiku of Japanese literature, written by the great masters of the genre from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and translated by one of America’s premier poet-translators.
Sam Hamill (1943–2018) is the author of more than forty books, including translated volumes from ancient Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Latin, and Estonian, as well as numerous volumes of original poetry. He was been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Mellon Fund. He was awarded the Decoración de la Universidad de Carabobo in Venezuela, the Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry from Washington Poets Association, and the PEN American Freedom to Write Award. He cofounded and served as Editor at Copper Canyon Press for thirty-two years and was the Director of Poets Against War.
