A Quote by Matsuo Basho

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.

Matsuo Basho

Quote Topics

Creates Five Haiku Lifetime Master Poems Poet Ten Three

Quote Author

Matsuo Basho
Japanese - Poet
1644 - November 28, 1694

Haiku is a particularly Zen form of poetry; for Zen detests egoism in the form of calculated effects or self-glorification of any sort. The author of haiku should be absent, and only the haiku present.

Anne Bancroft

Having examined three thousand haiku poems - two persimmons.

Masaoka Shiki

The author of haiku should be absent, and only the haiku present.

Anne Bancroft

The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!

Roland Barthes

Regarding R. H. Blyth: The first book in English based on the saijiki is R. H. Blyth's Haiku, published in four volumes from 1949 to 1952. After the first, background volume, the remaining three consist of a collection of Japanese haiku with translations, all organized by season, and within the seasons by traditional categories and about three hundred seasonal topics.

Reginald Horace Blyth

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.

Santoka Taneda

What I'm trying to do is to tell young people that I teach them how to breathe before I teach the haiku. That one breath, that one breath, because the haiku keeps you alive. It keeps you going. If you learn how to breath the haiku, you learn how to breathe. If you learn how to breathe, you're much healthier.

Sonia Sanchez

Yoko [Ono] was showing me some of these Haiku in the original. The difference between them and Long fellow is immense. Instead of a long flowery poem the Haiku would say 'Yellow flower in white bowl on wooden table' which gives you the whole picture.

John Lennon

What is the beauty of the haiku is that it is not simplistic. The beauty of the haiku I just said is very complex. It reaches all the complexities of our life on this Earth. Peace - that's a very complex idea, peace, so we can't get it as human beings.

Sonia Sanchez

It's hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems.

Jack Kerouac

I'm not a haiku artist, but I wanted to use the phrase 5, 7, 5 in the melody that flows over time. So the string melody, the first one is five notes, the next one is seven, and then the third one is five.

Terry Bozzio

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth's four volume Haiku became especially popular at this time [1950's] because his translations were based on the assumption that the haiku was the poetic expression of Zen. Not surprisingly, his books attracted the attention of the Beat school, most notably writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, all of whom had a prior interest in Zen.

Reginald Horace Blyth

Poems are language turned into art; sound and sense matter; they can be as long or longer than The Odyssey or as short or shorter than a haiku. Not very helpful.