startling banals

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) was a haiku poet-wanderer-monk. Like the tradition of haiku, he too made haikus from the most commonplace yet striking events around him. Haiku doesn't need many words or adjectives. And Issa rarely wrote of his feelings .. we get just glimpses of his mind scattered through his beautiful haikus mostly about his natural surroundings and the projection of his emotions to insects, birds, animals, mountains - everything that he finds around him - the ones abt frogs & sparrows are my salvation. 'The essential Issa' is a free online collection of 500 of the translator David Lanoue's favorite Issa poems.

Chiyo-ni (1703-1775) was a woman haiku poet. I like her poems too and the first haiku I ever heard was hers. I was at a friend Bijoy's house with other friends and we had some nice wine & fish and he started talking about haiku. I remember the one he read to us. It was about a woman whose child was no more and she is thinking of him. Most probably it was Chiyo-ni herself.

In what windy land
Wanders now my little dear
Dragonfly hunter

A link to her haikus on this page.