Book of the Week: Tanka and Haikai: Japanese Rhythms

Sadakichi Hartmann was friend to Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound, and author of the first primer of haiku in English, this limited edition volume (Bruno’s Chap Books, 2016), which features 9 tanka and 3 haiku (numbered, oddly enough, I, III, and IV). Are they his own work, or transcriptions of Japanese originals? The debate continues . . .

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

Do you have a chapbook published 2010 or earlier you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details.

Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by Jim Kacian, and are used with permission.

Winter? Spring? Who knows?
White buds from the plumtrees wing
And mingle with the snows.
No blue skies these flowers bring,
Yet theirs fragrance augurs Spring.


Though love has grown cold
The woods are bright with flowers,
Why not as of old
Go to the wildwood bowers
And dream of — bygone hours!

Were we able to tell
When old age would come our way,
We would muffle the bell,
Lock the door and go away —
Let him call some other day.

White petals afloat
On a winding woodland stream —
What else is life’s dream!