Haiku of Hosai Ozaki

Modern Haiku. The Heron's Nest. Roadrunner e-magazine.

Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. Books read.

Yuki Teikei Haiku Society: Join. GEPPO magazine. Annual anthologies. The Yuki Teikei Haiku Society Retreat at Asilomar: 2007. 2008 (a haibun). 2010.

Toward an Aesthetic for English-Language Haiku by Lee Gurga. 2004 Pescadero Haiku Weekend Workshop (including exercises) with Christopher Herold.

How to write specific forms: Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Renku. Tanka. Ballade. Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát. Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Bashō. Hosai Ozaki. Jane Hirshfield. J. Zimmerman. J. Zimmerman (haiku). J. Zimmerman (tanka). Marianna Monaco. Patricia Donegan. Patricia J. Machmiller. Shiki (haiku).

Right Under the Big Sky I Don't Wear a Hat (1993), haiku and prose by Hosai Ozaki

Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works (new version 2002; first published 1982) by Masaoka Shiki, translated by Janine Beichman.

Check How to Learn Japanese.

Hosai Ozaki
Books of Poetry.

Books of Poetry (alphabetical)

Right Under the Big Sky I Don't Wear a Hat

Right Under the Big Sky I Don't Wear a Hat, haiku and prose by Hosai Ozaki

• Haiku written by Ozaki 1905-1926, presented in sequence written.

• Some of them are:

  p. 37	On the field where evening has died out, my footsteps
  p. 43	I look back at the shore, not one footprint left
  p. 55	The heart that seeks something I release to the sea
  p. 58	Hands for washing radishes, someone comes to borrow them
  p. 67	There was a murder tonight the way the water flows
  p. 75	To one of the ears, she comes to tell a secret
  p. 89	The nails in the nail box are all crooked
  p. 101	A late moon shut out of the town hangs about
  p. 101	The one who clutches my shoulders doesn't have eyes

• Translator Hiroaki Sato.

• Presented in 1 line per haiku. Sato's "On translating haiku in one line" writes (p.21):
  • "for the great majority of Japanese haiku writers and commentators, the haiku is a one-line poem".
  • He quotes the critic Nihira Masaru: "'One-lineness is an indispensable part of the haiku form'".
  • Also he quotes the critic Sugaya Kikuo: "The haiku is a poetic form based on the contradiction that, while making a bisectional structure an inherent part of it, it never externalizes that structure in a two-line poem".
  • Sato concludes that as Ozaki's haiku were written in one line in their original Japanese, then that to have broken the English-language translations "into two or more lines may be not just unjustifiable but also misleading".

• English only; no kanji, kana, or romaji.

• The haiku are about three quarter of the haiku in Ozakai's Complete Works

• Illustrations of small block prints.

• 21 pp. prose (micro essays) contain brief excerpts from 6 of the 7 essays in On Entering a Temple House.

• Sato's translation "maintains, wherever possible, the original word order, unique colloquial tone, and remarkable brevity of expression ... his [Ozaki's] discovery of meaning in the common and the elusive in life.

Links and Books.

Links and Books.

• Best American Poetry series.
• Best Poems by the Best Poets - Some Lists of Winners.
• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of Britain
• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of the U.S.A.
• Other Books of Poetry Form.

Related pages: Poetry index. How to Write Poetry. How to write specific forms: Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka.

Books of Poetry Form.

Copyright © 2007-2016 by J. Zimmerman, except for the quoted poems. All rights reserved.

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