Backroads To Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal

AUTHOR

Basho

TRANSLATOR

Cid Corman

Backroads To Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal

Basho (1644–1694) is the most famous Haiku poet of Japan. He made his living as a teacher and writer of Haiku and is celebrated for his many travels around Japan, which he recorded in travel journals. This translation of his most mature journal, Oku-No-Hosomichi, details the most arduous part of a nine-month journey with his friend and disciple, Sora, through the backlands north of the capital, west to the Japan Sea and back toward Kyoto. More than a record of the journey, Basho’s journal is a poetic sequence that has become a center of the Japanese mind/heart. Ten illustrations by Hide Oshiro illuminate the text.

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Cid Corman is well known as a poet, translator, and as the editor of Origin, a ground breaking poetry magazine. His recent publications include Now Now and No Choice.

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Basho (1644-1694) is the most famous Haiku poet of Japan. He made his living as a teacher and writer of Haiku and is celebrated for his many travels around Japan which were recorded in his travel journals. Back Roads to Far Towns, a translation of Oku-No-Hosomichi, is his last and most mature.

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