Silent Flowers edited by Dorothy Price, illustrated by Nanae Ito

Source: Library sale
Hardcover, about 40 pgs
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Silent Flowers: A New Collection of Japanese Haiku Poems edited by Dorothy Price, illustrated by Nanae Ito, is gorgeously illustrated and focuses on a lot of traditional haiku poets and their poems, which focus on the seasons, nature, and humans in nature.  There are about three haiku per page, English translations only from the likes of Basho, Buson, and Issa.

“Sacred music at night;
Into the bonfires
Flutter the tinted leaves.” — Issa

I was reminded reading the introduction to this book of Suey’s comment about defining poetry or what a proper definition would be.  Price mentions in the introduction that Wordsworth, another poet, defined poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility.”  I’m not sure that helps much.  What I’ve loved about haiku is its ability to recognize something unexpected in nature and describe it in a way that illustrates something of the spiritual. I’ve written some horrible haiku but I still love the form and I think its one of the easiest to learn and teach, even if the poems are no where near as good as the old masters.

“The moon in the water;
Broken and broken again,
Still it is there.” — Choshu

A haiku by Basho about a butterfly is accompanied by a wonderful depiction of the butterfly among the orchids, and it is seamlessly incorporated with the poem on the page.   Silent Flowers: A New Collection of Japanese Haiku Poems edited by Dorothy Price, illustrated by Nanae Ito, won me over with not only its beautiful imagery in verse, but also its gorgeous, black and white illustrations.