Santoka

A failure as a student, businessman, employee, and husband, Santoka (1882-1940) wandered through Japan as a mendicant Zen monk for the last quarter of his life. While doing so, he kept writing free-rhythm haiku that ignored the traditional requirements of a seasonal indicator and the set form of 5-7-5 syllables. As a poet struck by wanderlust, Santoka has enjoyed a reputation comparable to Basho since the 1960s. Here, Hiroaki Sato, leading translator of Japanese poetry into English and winner of the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Translation, succeeds in recreating in English Santoka's simplicity and complexity in the original one-line format.