Haiku Before Haiku: From the Renga Masters to Bashō

by Steven D. Carter

While the rise of the charmingly simple, brilliantly evocative haiku is often associated with the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, the form had already flourished for more than four hundred years before Basho even began to write. These early poems, known as hokku, are identical to haiku in syllable count and structure but function differently as a genre. Whereas each haiku is its own constellation of image and meaning, a hokku opens a series of linked, collaborative stanzas in a sequence called renga.

Under the mastery of Basho, hokku first gained its modern independence. His talents contributed to the evolution of the style into the haiku beloved by so many poets around the world--Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, and Billy Collins being notable devotees. Haiku Before Haiku presents 320 hokku composed between the thirteenth and early eighteenth centuries, from the poems of the courtier Nijo Yoshimoto to those of the genre's first "professional" master, Sogi, and his disciples. It features 20 masterpieces by Basho himself. Steven D. Carter introduces the history of haiku and its aesthetics, classifying these poems according to style and context. His rich commentary and notes on composition and setting illuminate each work, and he provides brief biographies of the poets, the original Japanese text in romanized form, and earlier, classical poems to which some of the hokku allude.

Genres: Poetry, Japan

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2011

About the author

Professor of Japanese literature

Steven D. Carter has written eleven books and numerous articles on pre-modern Japanese literature and is an award-winning translator. He has received numerous academic awards, as both a scholar and a teacher. At Stanford he teaches courses in pre-modern Japanese literature and language.

Professor Carter's research interests include: Japanese poetry, poetics, and poetic culture; the Japanese essay; travel writing; historical fiction; and the relationship between the social and the aesthetic. His most recent book is Haiku Before Haiku: From the Renga Masters to Basho (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Before coming to Stanford in 2003, Professor Carter taught at UCLA, Brigham Young University, and UC-Irvine, serving as chair of the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department at the latter institution for 10 years.

He began his study of Japanese language and culture as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University, receiving his BA in Japanese with minors in English and history in 1974. He received an MA and PhD from UC-Berkeley, concentrating on classical and medieval Japanese poetry. His interest in Hiroshima dates to a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum in 1969, during one of the hotter periods of the Cold War.

Reviews

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haiku Before Haiku is a collection of the very earliest haiku, the little poems that are quite like haiku but are called hokku. Hokku are exactly like haiku in syllable count and structure but are considered a different genre. Haiku are usually each considered a unique and separate poem, while hokku link together and are written collaborately into what are called renga.

[Michelle Hoogterp · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm only giving it an 2-star rating because I can't say I was totally in the mood to read this book, plus I really disliked it's formatting.

While I appreciate that the translator places each poem into historical context and offers useful information to further interpretation and analysis of each work, the entire work would've benefited from a better format/layout.

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carter is an amazing translator but this book is far too short, not enough explanatory material, and the quality of the poems he picked is not so high, perhaps because he was focusing on breadth rather than depth. Other editions of Shinkei in English (to give just one example) have a much better selection of material.

[Don Wentworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important introduction to the origins of haiku.