The Heart of Haiku

by Jane Hirshfield

space between poet and object disappears,

To read a haiku is to become its co-author,

there is no walker, only path.

“The moon and sun are travelers of a hundred generations. The years, coming and going, are wanderers too. Spending a lifetime adrift on boat decks, greeting old age while holding a horse by the mouth—for such a person, each day is a journey, and the journey itself becomes home.”

Rather than distract himself from hardship, however, Bashō turned toward its investigation.

at 35, he took the vows of a lay monk, committing to a Buddhist practice undertaken within the context and circumstances of ordinary life.

Zen is less the study of doctrine than a set of tools for discovering what can be known when the world is looked at with open eyes.

These elements permeate the poetry of every tradition, from the carpe diem poetry of Horace and the Nahuatl “flower songs” of 16th-century Mesoamerica to the work of current American poets informed by ecology, postmodern philosophy, and quantum physics.

superficial understanding of the teachings can cause great harm.

Year after year, the monkey’s face wears a monkey’s mask toshidoshiya saru ni kisetaru saru no men