Category: Treasures from the Archives

Treasures – Shiki’s House

In this series of Treasures from the Archives we bring you interesting articles from the extensive twenty year archives of the World Haiku Review.

Visiting Shiki’s House

Uguisu-dani is a small station on the Yamanote Railway Line, five stops and due north from Tokyo Station. On the map, it looks drowned by the hurly-burly of the Ueno sprawl which is the centre of that part of the gigantic metropolis. Tokyo is on flat land. There are, however, hillocks and hammocks here and there, of which Ueno is one.

suzume yori uguisu ooki Negishi kana

Shiki, 1893 (Meiji 26)

more bush warblers
than sparrows are here –
Ah, Negishi!

version by ST

Read the rest of this fascinating article HERE.

Treasures – What is Hard Haiku?

Since we are still in September it seems relevant to put up this link to Hard Haiku – verses which deal with tough subjects not usually touched while writing a haiku.

Many don’t know that this writing even exists but what can be more relevant in a world turned upside down?

Here is an article from the January 2007 issue. This is the introduction.

Hard haiku is one of the projects pursued at WHCvanguard. It is an area where difficult subjects such as war, atrocities, death, tragedy or natural disasters are treated in haiku.

These are normally outside the traditional haiku which treats such topics, if at all, in an indirect, gentle or euphemistic manner. The apparent inability of haiku to deal with these themes has contributed to the criticism of haiku as inadequate or even inferior which makes it undeserving to be called a genre of serious literature.

Though this criticism is not quite accurate, it has a point. So, at WHCvanguard possibility of writing good haiku poems dealing with hard themes is sought. In this column, we will try to show some examples of that pursuit.

And here is an example of Hard Haiku –

twin towers
repeating their absence
day after day

Bill Kenney
New York, US

To read more follow the link below –

The Quest for Hard Haiku

More exciting Treasures from the WHR Archives will be coming soon.

If you think you know Basho’s frog, read this

How well do you know the most famous haiku of all, Basho’s frog?

Do you how many ways it has been translated?

The old green pond is silent; here the hop
Of a frog plumbs the evening stillness: plop! 

(Harold Stewart)

or this way

Oh thou unrippled pool of quietness
Upon whose shimmering surface, like the tears
Of olden days, a small batrachian leaps,
The while aquatic sounds assail our ears. 

 (Lindley Williams Hubbell)

Read these and many other versions of that famous frog in this article by editor-in-chief Susumu Takiguchi

A Contrarian View of Basho’s Frog

More exciting articles from the WHR Archives will be coming soon.