Haiku

Haiku is a collection of new English translations of Japanese haiki by four classic authors—Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki—that sit alongside the Japanese version and a transliteration. The poems are beautiful, snapshots that sometimes feel timeless and other times deeply within a particular time, but it is the format that really makes this book. For a beginner learning Japanese who also writes and reads poetry, this is a great format to be able to read haiku, enjoying both reading the translation and sounding out the original (including furigana for the kanji). For people who don't know Japanese characters, the transliteration will allow people to try reading the poems aloud in Japanese, which is nice, so the format with all of these versions together on a page makes it accessible to a broad audience. This was a great way to first properly encounter Japanese haiku.