Listen! a frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!
-- Matsuo Basho, Spring Days, 1686
This is the sort of thing that makes me despair of ever writing a decent haiku--a perfect, irreducible observation of nature.
Matsuo Basho was a Japanese poet in the 1600's and one of the first haiku masters. He is best known for his masterpiece, Oku no Hosomichi, or Narrow Road to the Interior, a chronicle of a five month journey through Japan told in a combination of haiku and prose.
There is a lovely article about Basho by novelist Howard Norman along with some beautiful photos taken along the route of Basho's journey in the latest issue of National Geographic magazine. You can read the article, view the photos, and even read a travelogue of Howard Norman's trip retracing Basho's steps on NationalGeographic.com
5 green and speckled frogs
ReplyDeletesat on a speckled log
eating some most delicious bugs
yum yum
One jumped into the pool
where it was nice and cool
now there are 4 green speckled frogs
glub glub
That is one of my daughter's favorite songs. Just thought I'd share since you were talking about frogs anyway.
Cindy
Ha! Well, Lizzie should be all set to write frog haiku, then. You apparently got that song stuck in Amy's head. I've never heard it, fortunately, so I survived.
ReplyDeleteI remember with fondness writing a haiku in grade school. I had no idea then that there was a tradition behind it.
ReplyDeleteIn free form verse news, I've been reading Leaves of Grass.
I confess I've never read it (all of it anyway--might have had a bit in school without knowing it). You'll have to let me know what you think of it.
ReplyDelete