A new translation of the selected verse of Kobayashi Issa, the eighteenth-century Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest noted for his haiku.

A Net of Fireflies is a superb collection of classic haiku composed by the leading writers of this delicate but intricate art form. With over three Japanese hundred haiku poems written over five centuries, the book is a thorough introduction to the unique world of Japanese haiku. Thirty-three full color haiku paintings complement the poems, providing a new and delightful dimension for understanding and appreciating this often illusive but always evocative poetic form.

Perhaps the first novel to take as its subject the appreciation and crafting of haiku, this is the story of Buck-Teeth, a provincial poet and fictitious student of the Japanese classical haiku master Issa, who, in the course of his training, travels to ancient Edo and contemporary New Orleans, falls in and out of love, considers the many schools of haiku, and ultimately learns what it is to be a poet. Along the way we are offered gentle lessons on haiku and what we might put into it, how it and we got this way, and what it all might mean.

From the editors of Zen Poems of China and Japan comes the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind to appear in English. This collaboration between a Japanese scholar and an American poet has rendered translations both precise and sublime, and their selections, which span fifteen hundred years—from the early T’ang dynasty to the present day—include many poems that have never before been translated into English. Stryk and Ikemoto offer us Zen poetry in all its diversity: Chinese poems of enlightenment and death, poems of the Japanese masters, many haiku—the quintessential Zen art—and an impressive selection of poems by Shinkichi Takahashi, Japan’s greatest contemporary Zen poet. With Zen Poetry, Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto have graced us with a compellingly beautiful collection, which in their translations is pure literary pleasure, illuminating the world vision to which these poems give permanent expression.

A biography and introduction to the work of the Japanese haiku poet whose love for nature finds expression in the more than thirty poems included in this book.

An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A Goop Book Club Pick "If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."--Joanna Goddard, Cup of Jo A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend. “When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed.” So ends Kate Baer’s remarkable poem “Things My Girlfriends Teach Me.” In “Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels” she challenges her reader to consider their grandmother’s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem “Deliverance” about her son’s birth she writes “What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?” Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate Bear proves herself to truly be an exemplary voice in modern poetry. Her words make women feel seen in their own bodies, in their own marriages, and in their own lives. Her poems are those you share with your mother, your daughter, your sister, and your friends.

This book sketches the life and poetry of Kobayishi Issa, a major Japanese haiku poet, and tries to identify the sources of his bold individualism and all-embracing humanism in terms of his long and checkered carrier.