The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
Basho is famous for impersonal nature haiku, but here are two of this haiku which focus on women as the center of attention: truly Basho is the poet of ordinary women alive and active.
Lunch break at a traveler’s rest:
Leaving azaleas in a bucket, behind them she tears dried cod
Azaleas bloom in May on long straight stalks dividing into twigs each with a cluster of young green leaves and flowers of pink or soft red petals. A woman in a rustic roadside rest area has gathered azaleas from the mountain and brought theminside to arrange in a vase, but a customer (Basho) comes in, so she places the flowers temporarily in a bucket in the center of the room, and goes to tear off some strips of dried cod for him to munch on with his tea. After the noon rush isover, she will get back to arranging them.
Sitting at a table, he sees her in the kitchen, from his point of view, behind the flowers. Seen from where he sits, the flowers appear as superimposed on her. She is partially hidden by them.
The verse is full of action with two lively specific verbs, ikeru, ‘to keep alive by putting in water’; and saku, ‘to tear’ -- a rough-sounding word with the feeling of coarse hands tearing off slices of fish flesh. This roughness is the harsh reality of common woman’s life. The delicacy of the azaleas reconciles that roughness. Both verbs have the woman as their subject. She is the center of the verse. She mediates between the delicacy of the flowers and the coarseness of her hands’ work.
The verse shows us the busyness of women – preparing food for both family and customers, along with a thousand other chores, while still finding time to make the place pretty with flowers.
--------------------------------
At the end of summer on the Japan Sea coast near Niigata, Basho takes a photograph, like the photographs in National Geographic, showing the nature of a place, as well as the nature of the season, and the nature of a woman:
Willow’s coolness skewering small sea bream fisherman’s wife
While the day is still exhaustingly hot, in the cool shade of a willow tree a woman pierces fish with metal pins to roast them over the fire in her sunken hearth. She bends over to see what she is doing, as the long straight leafy branches bend over her, swaying gracefully.
The skewer goes in through the gills and out the mouth. The sound of “skewering” contains the feeling of the metal pin puncturing the bloody flesh. This is the power of the verse: it takes us beyond our ordinary
consciousness to enter the reality of a woman who does this kind of work every day so her children or grandchildren get the protein, minerals, vitamins and omega fatty acids in small fish.
The willows, like the azaleas in the previous verse, reconcile the coarseness of her work with dead fish. Willows make this haiku a song of homage. Basho praises the woman for her constant work that elites will not do – cutting up and cooking fish, cleaning out the grunge from the drain or a baby’s ass, caring for sick and dying people – the work that had to be done to keep her family alive and healthy in a village in 17th century northern coastal Japan.
I plead for your help in finding a person or group to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material, to edit and improve the presentation, to receive all royalties from sales, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide and preserve for future generations.
The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
