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Jim McCrory

Matsuo Bashō, Bless Him

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Edited by Jim McCrory, Friday, 20 Sept 2024, 10:27



Image kindly provided by https://unsplash.com/@fokin_k

 

I was thinking of the haiku I blogged on yesterday whilst having a coffee in Waterstones in Glasgow.

I was reading large book I took from the shelf called Haiku illustrated: Japanese Short Poems. It’s a nicely illustrated book and if my wife reads this, she may buy it for our forthcoming anniversary.

The haiku that caught the most attention was one of the early haikus in the book by Matsuo Bashō,


"On a withered branch

A crow has alighted—

Nightfall in autumn."


Here Bashō, juxtaposes nightfall with the emergence of winter. It makes me feel somewhat melancholy when I read it, and I would like to know how the poem plays on your emotions. Go on tell me, there are no wrong answers.

Funny, I enjoyed the poem so much, I shared it with a young lad who was browsing the shelves for books linked to his forthcoming literature degree.

Go on, share a poem, a piece of prose that had an impact on you. The thing about these chance encounters, they live in our head and we live in their heads.


Note: The haiku is not exactly the one in the book; the one quoted here is the public domain haiku

 


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