The Poetry of Chiyo-ni: The Life and Art of Japan's Most Celebrated Woman Haiku Master

"Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi are to be deeply thanked for having given us with such articulate care a poetry major in any language and in any place or time." —Robert Creeley, poet

Chiyo-ni (1703-1775), also known as Kaga no Chiyo, is Japan's most celebrated female haiku poet. A student of Basho's disciples, she worked in an age when haiku was largely a male domain. As a poet, painter, and Buddhist nun, she lived a vibrant life while creating poems of crystalline clarity and delicate sensuality. This volume presents more than one hundred of her finest seasonal haiku, renku (linked verse) and haibun (travel poems).

The collected poems include:

morning glory
the well bucket entangled
I ask for water

a hundred gourds
from the heart
of one vine

rouged lips
forgotten—
clear spring water

These luminous, lucidly translated "haiku moments" give the reader an intimate experience of Chiyo-ni's remarkable vision—and bid us to stop and appreciate each moment of our lives. Handsomely illustrated with artwork by Chiyo-ni and others, the volume also includes illuminating essays on her life and art, informative notes, and a glossary of haiku-related terms.