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millennial_dandy's review
3.0
I love the idea of a collection of poetry centering on quiet, oft-unnoticed moments. In fact, many of the moments Issa chose to write about are the exact things poetry is made for:
Don't kill!...
The fly is asking you
To save his life
By rubbing his hands together.
This seemed, at its core, to be what Issa was all about: honoring every creature both big and small. The translator comments that "Issa wrote 54 Haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs, about 230 on the firefly, more than 150 on flies, over 100 on fleas, nearly 90 on the cicada, and about 70 on other insects, a total of about a thousand verses on such creatures.
When he stuck to this extremely zoomed in poetic lens, the haiku were great. When he zoomed out again, I thought they were ok.
A few standouts:
Insects on a bough
Floating down the river
Still singing
The snail
Goes to bed and gets up
Just as he is
Grasshopper!
Be the keeper of the graveyard
When I die
Don't kill!...
The fly is asking you
To save his life
By rubbing his hands together.
This seemed, at its core, to be what Issa was all about: honoring every creature both big and small. The translator comments that "Issa wrote 54 Haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs, about 230 on the firefly, more than 150 on flies, over 100 on fleas, nearly 90 on the cicada, and about 70 on other insects, a total of about a thousand verses on such creatures.
When he stuck to this extremely zoomed in poetic lens, the haiku were great. When he zoomed out again, I thought they were ok.
A few standouts:
Insects on a bough
Floating down the river
Still singing
The snail
Goes to bed and gets up
Just as he is
Grasshopper!
Be the keeper of the graveyard
When I die
More...