This is because Japanese is grammatically sparse and the number of beats per syllable is limited, while English… not so much. Translating poetry is one of the hardest language tasks imaginable-and translating haiku to English is the hardest of the hard. ![]() The name of the collection is drawn from one of the poems (labeled “152” in this collection) that reads: “girl cat, so thin on love and barley” One will note that many of his poems are about traveling. Living in 17th century Japan, his hometown was Iga-Ueno (a city whose other claim to fame was being one of two centers of medieval black-ops warriors known as ninja,) but he was also an ardent traveler and Zen Buddhist. ![]() Bashō is one of the seminal figures in Japanese literature, and was a fascinating person. This is a short collection of English translations of the haiku poetry of Matsuo Bashō. On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho by Bashō Matsuo
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