Love Haiku: Japanese Poems of Yearning, Passion, and Remembrance

by Patricia Donegan, Yoshie Ishibashi

Haiku is celebrated as a concise form of poetry able to convey a singular moment with great clarity. While haiku most often depicts the natural world, when focused on the elements of love and sensuality, haiku can be a powerful vehicle for evoking the universal experience of love.

In this elegant anthology, love is explored through beautiful images that evoke a range of feelings—from the longing of a lover to the passion of a romantic relationship. Written by contemporary Japanese poets as well as by haiku masters such as Basho, Buson, and Issa, these poems share not only the haiku poets’ vision for love, but their vision of the poignant moments that express it.

Genres: Poetry, Romance, Japan, Nonfiction

209 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[r0b]

this evening's moon-
I gaze on it alone
then go to sleep

konna ni yoi tsuki wo hitori de mite neru

Hosai Ozaki

[Frank]

Wonderful haiku on love by different poets. The book is divided into 3 parts: passion, yearning, remembrance (if I remember correctly; I returned it to the library this morning).

[Alex]

is life possible
without regret?
the beer foams over...

[Philip]

I would not have read this book, if not for our library's Adult Summer Reading Program.

I'm glad I read it, though if I'd ever go back and reread it, I'd give myself time to think about each poem as I went, rather than rushing through it.

The collection was solid, with masters like Issa, Buson, and (my favorite) Basho alongside of more contemporary poets. -But not so contemporary as not to be established. The anthologist mentioned she didn't include any living poets under the age of 60.

Translations are difficult, and I would imagine more so as the languages become more dissimilar. Spanish to Portuguese is easier than Spanish to English, which is easier than Spanish to Japanese.

So, it's difficult to determine how much subtlety is in the poem, compared to how much is implied by the reader, or added by the translator. Perhaps with poetry it doesn't matter, because we're each creating our own translation not from language to language, but from text to individual heart.

rendezvous:
entering
a thundercloud

-Mikajo Yagi

the one I curse
is the one I love-
red cotton roses

-Kanajo Hasegawa

And then there were the poems that moved me, and moved me again when I read the end notes on them. For example:

glad just to test
walking to the kitchen
to be with my wife...

-Sojo Hino

"The last ten years of Sojo Hino's life were spent bedridden, his wife nursing him; this haiku reflects a short respite from his illness to see if he could walk to the one he loved."

[Jenna]

A verse form (haiku) and a theme (romantic love) that traditionally have been kept apart come together in this rather lightweight anthology of mostly contemporary Japanese poets. I would have preferred for the poems to be arranged by poet, rather than by vague general theme, so that the personality of each individual poet could be savored.

My favorite piece:

"Half of the mountain
dyed by red maples:
a one-sided love."

--Chiyo-ni (18th cent., female)

[Rambling Reader]

surprisingly queer.

[Hawraki]

This book contains Haiku for different poets about yearning, passion and remembrance. The poems are touching and what I like the most about this book is that the Haiku was written in Romaji so you can know the pronunciation and how it would sound in Japanese.

Another good thing about the book is that it contains a brief about each poet in the last few pages, this should help the reader in finding more information about the poets.

[Joshua Gage]

This is probably more of a 4.5 stars than a 4. This is a really solid anthology of haiku, and I love that Donegan chose to focus on earlier haiku instead of post-50's or post-60's haiku. That makes for a unique anthology that, though ignoring current trends, gives us perspectives on love from well established haijin. I felt some of the translations were wordy or clunky, and I was upset to see that some poets who have great haiku about love (Kikaku, in particular) were excluded. Beyond that, this is a really solid collection.

[Lisa]

Thoughtful and very well put together - there are Japanese drawings to illustrate the sections and at the back there is info on each poet and brief analysis of some of the haiku's, I would've liked that for each one but it's still really good.

[Ally]

I love this book --- i write haiku of my own, but this collection is a great 'pick me up' at any time of day. I like opening a page at random --- beautiful, bittersweet stuff in here.

[Chris Lohn]

3.5 rounded up to 4.
Some of the Haiku presented in this collection were fantastic. Others left me scratching my head.
I liked the layout and occasional illustrations. I think many of the included poems were a stretch to include in a book called Love Haiku, but they were still enjoyable as is. The editor admits in the introduction that she took some liberties.
It was great to see some new poets included in the book. Many collections only include a handful of master poets.

[Don Wentworth]

No hokum here: simply put, one of the finest collections of haiku published on English.

moonflowers -
the deep folds
begin to open

Hisago Sugita

[Tamara Canno]

I like it, but I don't think some haikus were really haikus and some of them weren't love ones.

[(the.darkandmoody.reader)]

5/5 - haiku is my favorite type of poetry

[ej]

3.75-4/5 some reallyyyy good ones, a great selection, not too many duds - quick n largely enjoyable read

[Kate]

3.8 ⭐️ selection of haiku based on love, yearning, passion and remembering.

[Punk]

This is a lovely little book with thick glossy pages and gorgeous full color botanical art by Kamisake Sekka. Many of the poems are actually closer to senryū than haiku, concerning as they do messy human feelings, but the old haiku masters are in here as well as many modern poets, and a fair mix of women and men.

My main problem with this is that many of these poems are not "love haiku" at all, either because they're senryū or just the editor's idea of love haiku. Part of what I love about haiku is that the reader brings half of the poem with them, but here, Donnegan is bringing the other half herself by shouting LOVE HAIKU and drowning out my interpretation. I know, I picked up a book called Love Haiku, I only have myself to blame.

Each poem is on its own page, translated into three minimalist lines with a transliteration below in one line. It's not entirely clear who translated this, if it was Donegan or Ishibashi, or if it was a team effort. Donegan's introduction (which contains the undergraduate staple "For human beings throughout history...") obscures this information. Donegan is clear, however, that "the collection is centered on 'passionate or romantic love'"—but not "directly erotic" or "graphic" love—and she freely admits that she may be using these poems in ways the poets didn't intend. Which is fair use! I just think it's a reading that flattens some of these poems.

There's an index by poet, as well as a few endnotes that aren't indicated in the text. There are short biographies for each poet, which include their gender for those unfamiliar with Japanese names, but throughout the book Donegan identifies the poets in the western way with given name first, which I found disorienting.

The poems are divided into three sections. Be advised, the last section of the book contains a lot of dead spouses.

Yearning:


nights of rain—
lonely, I fall asleep
holding my breasts

Yoshino Yoshiko


Many of the poems in this section are about loneliness. I like the sense of self-comfort in this one. It's a cozy kind of lonely with the cold rain outside and being warm in bed inside, even if it is alone.


Passion:


a pomegranate
opened its mouth—
foolish love affair

Ozaki Hosai


I love the messiness implied here, the spill of passion from the pomegranate's mouth, the love affair and the fruit both leaving an indelible red stain, but it was probably fun while it lasted. The poems in this section are probably the closest to being actual love haiku, though even in here you have to squint a bit. Plus, if you're going to include a haiku about a peach that otherwise seems to have little to do with passion, why not Bashō's super sexxy (typo but I'm keeping it) poem about the Fushimi peaches?

Saito Sanki's poem is cool and evocative, but its passion is muted, deferred:


middle age—
ripening in the distance
a night peach


Whereas the passion's fairly squirting out of Bashō:


my silk robe
peaches of Fushimi
drip here


Sexxy translation by Jane Reichhold. Anyway, as I was saying, maybe if this collection was called literally anything other than Love Haiku I'd be a lot happier. For example, Human Feelings Haiku would have been more representative of the scope of emotions present in these poems.

The final poem in the final section, though, hit me immediately and had me feeling a bit more charitable towards this collection. If only the whole thing had felt like this.


Remembrance:


so many
many ways—
to have been in love

Nozawa Boncho

[Ben Gaa]

I really liked this anthology. Divided into three sections, Yearning, Passion, and Remembrance, Patricia Donegan places one haiku per page giving each one room to breathe and resonate. The Japanese haiku poets in the book are a nice cross section that spans a few hundred years and helps to illustrate the incredible freshness of a well written haiku. This is a book that I will be rereading many times in the years ahead.

[Kindle Embers]

Excellent!

[Jessica]

Interesting light read. A nice combination of ancient and modern haikus.

[Carolyn]

Lovely selection of haiku by a wide range of authors, contemporary and long-gone.

[Mojoey]

I loved this book. I read a few poems each morning before work with my coffee. What a pleasure.

[Shirley Reid]

Good.

[CharlesQ]

page 140 supreme

[Susan Molloy]

This is a serene compilation of some of the most vivid haiku around. I enjoyed almost every poem, and the illustrations are very relaxing.