Author Description

Growing up in poverty and neglect, Issa's writing is crass, playful, and full of compassion for the unnoticed and the undignified. In A Taste of Issa, David G. Lanoue writes, "Issa is a poet who speaks to our common humanity in a way that is so honest, so contemporary, his verses might have been written this morning. Basho is the most revered of the haiku poets of Old Japan, but Issa is the most loved." Poems of Kobayashi Issa is a short and varied collection of Issa's haiku. Each translation is accompanied by the original Japanese text and English transliteration (romaji).