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Volume
33.1
Winter Spring
2002
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book
review
So
Here You Are
by Cid Corman
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reviewed
by Robert Spiess
So
Here You Are by Cid Corman; tel-let, 325 W.
Tyler, #B, Charleston, IL 61920-1865; 2001, 22 pp.,
paper, $5 ppd.
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With
one haiku to a page this 8 1/2" x 11" stapled
booklet contains versions of Bashô’s haiku. All
are in 5/7/5 syllabic form. Three examples are included
here, paralleled by Makoto Ueda’s translations (on
the right) from his Bashô and His Interpreters:
Selected Hokku with Commentary (Stanford University
Press, Stanford, California, 1991):
The
cats making love
once they’ve stopped in the bedroom
a faint vernal moon.
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cat’s
love—
when its over, hazy
moonlight in the bedroom |
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A
full harvest moon
coming to this very gate
the tide its highest.
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the
harvest moon—
crawling up to my gate
the rising tide |
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Today
is the time—
folks—getting old gets to feel
a first wintry blast.
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just
for today
let us all be aged men—
first winter shower |
Perhaps
a bit pricey for the number of poems and type of production,
but one may wish to weigh this against Cid Corman’s
innovative versions.
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©2002 Modern Haiku • PO Box 68 • Lincoln, IL 62656
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