Welcome to the Bod Library’s Basho Wing, dedicated to the great poet, artist, trail guide, traveler, teacher & companion–who taught as he went, mainly by living example.
Like a jazz master who plays with & inspires others from place to place & time to time, Basho goes on inspiring centuries later, even across seas, cultures & languages.
Bod Library plans to open 3 BASHO SITES:
backcountryways.net will host our newest (& presumably final) translation of his master classic, oku no hosomichi, a journey for the ages we render as backcountry ways or backcountry trails. (Two earlier versions in Bedford Anthologies were published as The Narrow Road through the Backcountry.)
backcountryways.xyz will host our multi-level Trail Companion Guide, with passage-by-passage notes, comments & alternative verse versions, along with chapters on translation & related topics.
basho-wing.xyz, here, for both simple & in-depth introductions to Basho’s various arts (hokku, renga, haibun) & core teachings.
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While our other Basho sites feature his life-culminating work & trail masterpiece in the final version of our 50-year translation-project, we hope this wing will shed light on the incredible range of his work–gem-like hokku (“opening verses”); adventurous renga (“linked poetry”); & evocative haibun (“trail sketches,” weaving poetry & prose).
And more–the depth of his vision, clarity of his art, & power of his core teachings, resonating through the centuries. What hokku is to renga, renga becomes to the travel sketches, journeys taken with readers as traveling companions. What he taught goes on inspiring new work in many artistic forms (including film) generations later, as well as in many languages.
Nothing puts Basho so fully in a class of his own more than the teaching he brings to the table by both example & principle, way & embodiment. Indeed, in his own time, too, he was considered a master-teacher first & foremost, his life & art one. Although widely mis-represented, no poet may be more fully accessible to newcomers, even schoolchildren just discovering the rich rewards of such a practice….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~old pond/ frog jumps in/ water’s sound
~~~~~~~~~~~~~furu ike ya/ kawazu tobikomu/ mizu no oto
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Site Plan:
Pages/ Rooms/ Topic Areas: reached by clicking on Top Menu, e.g.,
~~~hokku (the basic word-snap technology open to all);
~~~renga (the social game & genre, with its forms, principles & guidelines);
~~~haibun (the sketch, in Basho’s brush, an architecture of creative joinery);
& ~key teachings (i.e., the Basho way itself).
Materials will include:
~~~examples (the works themselves in translation);
~~~resources (guide’s layered commentary, notes, glossary &/or links);
~~~essays (in-depth explorations of key elements);
& ~personal applications (suggestions for readers/ & writers).
Although “Basho-Wing” sounds singular, the architecture is also inherently both plural (part of a coordinated working together to accomplish what neither wing might do by itself) & an action verb …..