On Haiku

This is a short, sweet collection of haiku gathered and translated into English, ranging from the famous and classical to more recent work, and generally good. The translation style isn’t consistent, and for good reason: some poems were rendered more freely than others, with the choice made by the result—if a freer rendering came out more “faithful” to the Japanese, that’s the one kept. Given the gulf between English and Japanese in syllables and structure, that seems the right call. Only the first section is exclusively nature poems, which is a shame, because they were the best of the collection; the more “human” poems seemed to lose something, though not for want of trying. It’s still a good collection, easily read in an hour or so—I just wish there were more of it.