Description
Book Synopsis"The travel writings of Matsuo Bashō are of enormous literary importance, and so it is a joy to see them collected in this compact volume, in translations of exemplary elegance, faithfulness, and accessibility. The annotations are especially valuable: they show a solid grasp of the author’s life, work, and times, and provide rich and detailed background information about allusions to Chinese and Japanese classics. Along with the high quality of the translations themselves, this thorough commentary makes the book a significant scholarly resource and will help readers appreciate the density and delicacy of Bashō’s writing.
A very welcome addition to the English-language literature on one of the central poets of the Japanese tradition."
—David B. Lurie, Columbia University
Trade Review"Destined to delight readers with its vibrant, spot-on translations, this definitive collection of haiku grandmaster Bashō’s travel writings, in prose as well as poetry, conveys the exquisite pleasures and heartbreaks of the road as a metaphor for life itself."
—Adam L. Kern, University of Wisconsin–Madison
"Steven Carter is an outstanding scholar and translator, and his work here is superb. The six poetic travel diaries that he includes range from Bashō’s most beloved works to several lesser-known gems. With its copious and insightful annotations, introductions, maps, and appendices, all of which are informed by the best and latest Japanese scholarship,
Travel Writings will long be the go-to source in English for Bashō’s lyrical travel ruminations. The work is sure to appeal to poets, students, and scholars alike, many of whom may be inspired to set out, with book in hand, to retrace the steps of the great seventeenth-century haikai master through the hinterlands of Japan."
—R. Keller Kimbrough, University of Colorado Boulder
