Haiku: Messages from Matsuyama

Poetry. Asian Studies. Translated from the Japanese by Leith Morton. Kusano Shinpei (1903-1988) is one of Japan's mostdistinguished and innovative poets, full of the same kinds of brevity, inventiveness and surprising turns of phrase that distinguish the work of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Here, Kusano celebrates Fuji, the holy mountain, in a poetic equivalent of the great woodblock series of Hokusai, occasionally borrowing images from that master artist. Includes anintroduction by the American beat poet Cid Corman and a detailed bibliography.