Matsuo Basho is the Japanese saint of Haiku. Of samurai heritage, he lived in the 17th century and had an enormous following. His complete works, consisting of 1011 haiku, have recently been collected and translated by Jane Reichhold and can be found in Basho The Complete Haiku (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2008).
It is my humble intention to also write 1011 haiku, one each day. I began in August 2009 and by my estimation, should finish in May 2012. Wish me luck! As my readers will see, I have now completed 200. When I am done if only one of the 1011 haiku approaches the skill and mastery of Basho, I will be satisfied.
I post on Twitter every day or two (seven days worth of current entries appear on the bottom of the blog page) and then periodically re-post to the blog, reformatting the haiku from Twitter-slash form to traditional three line haiku form.
It is my intent in these writings to keep in mind the age in which we live. Traditional haiku is generally concerned with nature, however today our "nature" has changed. New technology has replaced the winds of nature as the force of our times. What was a rock is now a computer key. What was a cherry blossom is now the web of world wide information that we take for granted. What was light is now the speed of light. Haiku is about finding an essence and in radical ways our essence has been changed by new technology. I have sought to honor haiku by strictly adhering to its traditional form of 5-7-5 syllables on three lines, and also by using the material of our "nature", our age, in this, our new millennium.
A warning! In confronting what may seem like a mountain of haiku on these pages, it is best to think of chocolate: a little is exquisite, too much will make you ill. Also, an important aspect of haiku is to understand that the reader will put as much (or as little) into the haiku as the writer. If the haiku is good it will become your meaning, not mine. With this in mind, please enjoy!
