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whitesaucehotsauce's review against another edition
3.0
As you tend to get with some older translations, these renditions of Issa's poems are very lean and simple. In my opinion, too much so. I'd recommend the Sam Hamill translation over this. If you like your translated haiku on the leaner side, I'd recommend Makoto Ueda's work. He never translated Oraga haru in full, but you can find some of it in Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa.
richardwells's review against another edition
5.0
Five stars, of course five stars, what do you expect?
Not "A Year of My Life," but "THE Year of My Life." Issa makes one year emblematic of his entire life with a mix of prose and haiku that examines the intellectual, emotional, spiritual value of the events that make up a life - birth, death, travel and its unfolding landscape, work.
We've seen a lot of the haiku as stand alone pieces, but putting them into context raises their impact in unexpected ways. The well known haiku:
The world of dew
Is the world of dew
and yet
and yet...
is a powerful piece, when it's preceded by Issa's musings on his young daughter's death it becomes closer to devastating.
And so, throughout...
Not "A Year of My Life," but "THE Year of My Life." Issa makes one year emblematic of his entire life with a mix of prose and haiku that examines the intellectual, emotional, spiritual value of the events that make up a life - birth, death, travel and its unfolding landscape, work.
We've seen a lot of the haiku as stand alone pieces, but putting them into context raises their impact in unexpected ways. The well known haiku:
The world of dew
Is the world of dew
and yet
and yet...
is a powerful piece, when it's preceded by Issa's musings on his young daughter's death it becomes closer to devastating.
And so, throughout...
More...