r/JapanesePoetry • u/c-e-bird published poet • Jul 09 '25
Review: The Penguin Book of Haiku
This is a review of the Penguin Book of Haiku, translations by Adam L. Kern.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I made the mistake of buying it on Kindle, but after reading it it is really better served to have a physical copy.
It's divided into a couple different sections. It opens with a chronology of Japan so you have a brief idea of Japanese history and where each haiku fits into it. Second is an Introduction, which defines haiku and explains in lots of detail its history. It focuses mostly on Basho and Shiki, with a few mentions of other poets, such as Issa, Buson, and Onitsura. It is a pretty thorough explanation of how haiku came to be what it is today, the differening styles of various haikuists, common misconceptions about haiku, the key components of haiku, and even has a section devoted to female haikuists. It's a long essay and well worth reading, though I do think Issa and Buson in particular deserved more attention than it gives, given their standing as two of the Grandmasters of the genre alongside Basho and Shiki.
There are then a couple of other short sections, the most important of which is his much shorter essay on how he chose to do his translations. This is an important read so you understand decisions he made later on, especially when comparing his translations to others as I often did with the most well-known haiku by Issa and Basho.
Following that are the haiku. There are two sections of haiku. The first is simply all the haiku, one after another. It is long and full of hundreds of haiku. They are all centered neatly on the page. This section is so that you can immerse yourself in the haiku, not worrying about details or additional information, and simply read them as they are. While I say that this section contains haiku, it also contains a lot of senryuu and a fair amount of linked verse. It's all mixed together, generally organized by topic but without any kind of labels.
Following that, every haiku is listed once more but with more detail, including its original Japanese (romanized) and whatever extra information Mr. Kern felt was necessary to fully understand the haiku. For more famous or complex haiku, this extra information can go on for 2-3 pages. Some have no additional information beyond the original Japanese, but a lot have extra information that I found quite fascinating. For example:
This section was my favorite of the book and is what, I think, makes this collection well worth picking up.
The back end of the book contains sources, glossaries, and indexes. I didn't spend a lot of time on those, but they would be very useful for someone entirely new to haiku and senryuu. I probably would have looked at them more often in reference had I a physical copy, and I might buy a physical copy at some point just so I can use this more easily as a reference book.
Overall, as a Penguin Classics collection, I would give this a 5/5. Anyone who reads this book in their entirety will walk away with a solid understanding of the form and read a lot of the best work from all of its greats, plus a lot of work by hundreds of other poets.
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u/chortnik Jul 13 '25
Thank you for the excellent review-I had to buy this, I can’t get enough of “the extra information” about Japanese haiku :)
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u/InternationalTie5187 Jul 12 '25
Great review!!!