The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi)
The masterwork of haiku and one of the greatest travel narratives in any language, this prose-and-haiku sequence records Basho's 1689 journey into the remote north of Japan. Basho invented the modern haiku, elevated it from wordplay to spiritual practice, and showed how seventeen syllables could hold infinity. The frog jumping into the old pond is the most famous sound in world poetry.
Without the apparatus you will miss most of it. Basho's plain images carry centuries of allusion to Chinese poets and famous place names; in English the haiku can read like weather reports. He also rearranged the facts (his companion Sora's diary contradicts the itinerary), and the whole journey is over in well under a hundred pages.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
