Frog Poem by Matsuo Bsho
"Old pond,
Young frog.
Splash!"
I heard this poem on the radio recently. I do not know the title of it, nor do I know if I have it exactly right. But I really liked it.
"Old pond...
a frog leaps in
water's sound."
Matsuo
Basho. I found
this at: http://www.lsi.usp.br/usp/rod/poet/haiku.html
S. C. Mullen
I contacted my friend Izumi who lived in Japan and asked her if she knew about the first poem. She gave me the author's name, and told me a little about it. Below is some of what she shared with me about this poem and author.
"This is a so famous Haiku in Japan. The
auther is a Matsuo Bsho.
I think this poem represents big nature and silence.
Haiku is a short poem of seventeen syllables written in 5-7-5
meter.
This improvised short poems in which wit and humor were
emphasized.
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), a great poet and essayist of the Edo
period(1603-
1867) established [haikai] as a literary art. The two basic rules
are to
regulate the poem metrically and to include in it a word
expressing one of the
four seasons (kigo). Haikai poetry won general popularity in the
late Edo
period. However, it later became so conventionalized that in the
Meiji period
(1868-1912) an innovation had to be brought about by Masaoka
Shiki(1867-1902)
and others, who advocated a realistic representation of nature.
The term haiku,
a new name for haikai, very often refers to this modernized short
poem. Senryu,
another kind of short poem written in the same meter, aims
chiefly at comical
satire. Anyway, Basho was also a travelar. He walked around all
parts of the
country in Japan. He especially loved the northeastern Japan. He
produced
many haiku and accounts of trips with his travel.
[ Oku no Hosomichi ] is most famous of his travel books."
Page last updated 01 Feb 2003.
Email comments to dmmaki@MichelesWorld.net