The Year of My Life (Oraga Haru)
The most human of the great haiku masters. Where Basho achieves transcendence, Issa wallows in ordinary sorrow and finds it beautiful. His haiku about his dying infant daughter ("This world of dew / is only a world of dew / and yet... and yet...") is among the most emotionally devastating lines in all of world literature. Issa makes haiku personal in ways Basho never quite did.
Issa's tenderness rides the edge of sentimentality, and here, unbuffered by selection, it sometimes tips over: dozens of sparrows, flies, and orphaned pathos in a row. The book is a haibun diary, loose prose threading the poems, with Pure Land piety you may be tempted to skim. In English the haiku arrive denuded of sound; you are trusting the translator completely.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
