This book is a guided tour through the work of Japanese haiku master Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), gathering together in one text his most effective and evocative verses. After an introduction to Issa's poetry and life, the translator, David G. Lanoue, presents 1,210 haiku culled from his on-line archive of 10,000. 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."

Issa's Best: A Translator's Selection of Master Haiku, Print Edition

Literature & Fiction

Kobayashi, Issa

Poetry

HaikuGuy.com

"Haiku Guy" begins a quintet of connected, short, haiku-pappered novels wherein a fictionalized Issa ("Cup-of-Tea") teaches the art of haiku to the young provincial poet, Buck-Teeth. In the course of his training, Buck-Teeth travels to Old Edo and contemporary New Orleans, falls in and out of love, considers the many schools of haiku, and learns what it is to be a poet.

Haiku Guy

Lanoue, David G.

The poetry of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) can coax readers toward an insight sorely needed in our time: animals are like people and deserve our care and compassion. Animals work like people, play like people, sing, dance, make love, start families, and participate in seasonal celebrations from New Year's Day to end-of-year drinking parties--as portrayed in the haiku of Issa. They can also, according to the Pure Land Buddhism to which Issa subscribed, attain enlightenment in a future life. Recognizing animals, as Issa does, as fellow travelers in a shared world is a first step toward their ethical treatment.

Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet's Perspective

History & Criticism

No mere "child's poet," Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) is an aware and committed artist who celebrates, in a lifetime of haiku, the "Other Power" of Amida Buddha: a power that transforms the individual and universe or, more exactly, the individual/universe in their inseparableness. This is the first book-length English-language treatment of this remarkable Japanese poet in relation to his joyful, "priestly" mission.

Pure Land Haiku: The Art of Priest Issa: Revised Second Print Edition

Arts & Photography

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) was a brilliant master of Japanese haiku. This instructional book offers six lessons on how to write haiku based on examples from Issa and from twenty-first century poets who are following his creative path.

Write like Issa: A Haiku How-To

Published on the 200th anniversary of Kobayashi Issa’s Oraga haru (“My Spring”), this haiku-peppered writer’s sketchbook is a loving homage to the Japanese master. Lanoue covers four seasons of his own life (Spring 2015, Summer 2016, Autumn 2017, and Winter 2018-19) while drawing parallels, both serious and playful, between his own experiences and those of his great mentor two centuries earlier. Like Issa’s poetic journal of 1819, Lanoue’s journal of 2015-19 addresses life’s mundane particulars as well as its deepest purpose—with off-the-cuff reflections on poetry, desire, aging, travel, politics, work, dreams, love, art, childhood, higher education, and Buddhism thrown in.

My Journal with Haiku Sprinkled in

Genre Fiction

This book is a major expansion of "Issa's Best: A Translator's Selection of Master Haiku" (2012). It presents most of the same seasonally-arranged haiku by Kobayashi Issa in English translation as the earlier book did--this time along with the original Japanese texts and commentary by the translator. The introduction provides an overview of Issa's life and poetry.

A Taste of Issa: Haiku

World Literature

The publication of this omnibus edition of five short novels coincides with the twentieth anniversary of that of the first installment, “Haiku Guy,” which came out in the year 2000. Five interconnected narratives explore the art of haiku by following the adventures of Buck-Teeth, a fictional student haiku master Cup-of-Tea, the historical Issa. Sliding easily back and forth between Old Japan and contemporary New Orleans, between the unfolding stories and the author’s writing group commenting on those stories, the five meandering narratives reflect on the meaning of life, the purpose of poetry, and the search for enlightenment. Though each little novel stands alone, together they form parts of a greater whole that, author David G. Lanoue suggests, can be discovered in the same way that one finds shapes in midsummer clouds—hence his advice to the reader with which he ends his Preface, “Squint hard.”

Haiku Guy Omnibus: A 20th Anniversary Edition of Haiku Guy, Laughing Buddha, Haiku Wars, Frog Poet, and Dewdrop World

Old Grandpa's Songbook Volume 1 Songs of Innocence

Music

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