One of the most influential Japanese poets of all time, Matsuo Basho (1644–1694) elevated haiku from a mere literary pastime into an exquisite poetic craft. Leaving his hometown of Ueno behind, he moved to Kyoto where he studied poetry and Zen as a young man and later became a Buddhist monk. This, perhaps, is why his verses are marked by wabi-sabi, an aesthetic that evokes seclusion, melancholy, imperfection and leans towards modesty, simplicity, and transience of all things. The Essential Haiku collects his most delicate and vivid poems as well as his intimate thoughts on the art of one breath-long exclamation of delight that became the sole purpose of his life.

Basho writes:

Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.

Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.

The basis of art is change in the universe. What’s still has changeless form. Moving things change, and because we cannot put a stop to time, it continues unarrested. To stop a thing would be to halve a sight or sound in our heart. Cherry blossoms whirl, leaves fall, and the wind flits them both along the ground. We cannot arrest with our eyes or ears what lies in such things. Were we to gain mastery over them, we would find that the life of each thing had vanished without a trace.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things — mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity — and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

The secret of poetry lies in treading the middle path between the reality and the vacuity of the world.

One must first of all concentrate one’s thoughts on an object. Once one’s mind achieves a state of concentration and the space between oneself and the object has disappeared, the essential nature of the object can be perceived. Then express it immediately. If one ponders it, it will vanish from the mind.

In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something can be called, for lack of a better name, a windswept spirit, for it is much like thin drapery that is torn and swept away by the slightest stirring of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

For a person who has the spirit, everything he sees becomes a flower, and everything he imagines turns into a moon. Those who do not see the flower are no different from barbarians, and those who do not imagine the moon are akin to beasts. Leave barbarians and beasts behind; follow nature and return to nature.

Every form of insentient existence — plants, stones, or utensils — has its individual feelings similar to those of men.

When we observe calmly, we discover that all things have their fulfillment.

One needs to work to achieve enlightenment and then return to the common world.

Complement these enlightening passages from The Essential Haiku with the art of jisei, a Japanese death poem.

Some poets have this power. They can help us stop and discover moments of spaciousness free of mundane troubles, free of our mind with its automatic reactions and obsessive self-concerns. One such poet is Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935–January 17, 2019), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, who is known for her intimate observations of the natural world.

Her poetry draws our attention to the small things of everyday life and teaches us the art of being alive in this moment, here and now. This art comes vibrantly alive in the poem “Mornings at Blackwater” included in the collection Red Bird. Read here by the poet in her heartwarming and comforting voice. Please enjoy!

MORNINGS AT BLACKWATER
by Mary Oliver

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.

Complement this lovely mini meditation, an integral part of Red Bird collection of poems, with Mary Oliver’s tribute to her disobedient and infinitely charming dog Percy.

How do we read a haiku? A surprising primer on this art comes from a slim volume by Yoel Hoffmann titled Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. In the introductory part of the book, we learn that a haiku consists of seventeen syllables written in three lines and traditionally evokes an image of the natural world. It is the shortest verse form found in either the East or the West.

A good haiku may contain more than one sentence but always paints one picture, and the poet needs great clarity of vision to make it a masterpiece with only a few brush strokes on the canvas of his imagination. Yoel Hoffmann writes:

Since about the sixteenth century, three conventions have become universally accepted: 1) the haiku describes a single state or event; 2) the time of the haiku is the present; and 3) the haiku refers to images connected to one of the four seasons [of the year].

Matsuo Basho, foremost among haiku poets, once said, “About the pine, learn from the pine; about the reed, learn from the reed.” This famous dictum instructs the poet to become unconscious of himself to see the object of his craft with absolute clarity, as it is in and of itself. To clarify what this means, Yoel Hoffmann cites a modern haiku scholar Kenneth Yasuda who wrote:

When one happens to see a beautiful sunset or lovely flower, for instance, one is often so delighted that one merely stands still. This state of mind might be called “ah-ness,” for the beholder can only give one breath-long exclamation of delight, ‘Ah!’ The object has seized him and he is aware only of the shapes, the colors, the shadows… There is here no time or place explicitly for reflection for judgments, or for the observer’s feelings…. To render such a moment is the intent of all haiku, and the discipline of the form.

So a haiku attempts to say something without saying it. What remains unsaid tells more than the words but is unclear without them. Take, for example, the following haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). It is mid-winter, at twilight, and Basho stands on the seashore while patches of light on the waves reflect the setting sun and wild ducks call:

Darkening sea:
a mallard’s call
sounds dimly white.

Haiku poetry resounds with endless meanings because it often attains that perfect simplicity sought for in philosophy, religion, literature, and art. In the next haiku by Oshima Ryota (1718-1787), for a fraction of a second, the gap between reality and illusion, the eternal and the momentary, closes:

Moon in the water
Somersaults
and streams away.

A haiku poet observes what others scarcely see. How many of us would have noticed what Shiba Fukio (1903-1930) describes in the next poem — the split-second gap between the horse’s first step and the movement of the carriage?

A barley wagon
lags—then leaps
behind the horse.

And finally, some may say that a poem as short as the haiku can’t convey the depth and complexity of our feelings. But hasn’t Ochi Etsujin (b. 1656) captured, in the following lines, an entire “scene from a marriage?”

Autumn evening:
‘Isn’t it time,’ she comes and asks,
‘to light the lantern?’

Complement Japanese Death Poems, an enlightening and educational read, with the short three-minute video below that goes a bit deeper into the technical side of writing a haiku.

Robert Frost (March 26, 1874–January 29, 1963) is perhaps one of the few poets who needs no introduction. Author of many enduring and iconic poems in American letters, he continues to enrich and ennoble our literary lives. But few of us know that behind the public persona of a celebrated poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, is a man whose life was laced with tragedy, entwined with loss, and twisted with grief.

His father, a newspaperman, died of tuberculosis when Frost was eleven, leaving the family destitute; his mother, whose Swedenborgian mysticism was a major influence on her son, died of cancer when Frost was twenty-six. His younger sister Jeanie had to be committed to a mental hospital in 1920, and Frost himself feared at times for his own sanity. Mental illness ran in his family. His daughter Irma was also committed to a mental hospital, and his son Carol committed suicide. Another son died of cholera at age eight, and two of his daughters also died young.

Yet despite all this pain — and more so because of it — he was able to write the most memorable and life-giving poems we know today. One of them sprang to my mind after a recent loss of someone whose teachings have influenced my meditation and mindfulness practice for years. It’s titled “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and included in the collection New Hampshire. Recited here by Frost himself in his warm aged voice. Please enjoy!

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” an integral part of New Hampshire collection of poems, remains a monumental work of poetic genius.