The Daily Glance
Distant Frogs: Selected Senryu by Gengoro was translated by The Aogiri Group and edited by Fukabori Shige and Taylor Mignon. Taylor Mignon sent me the book back in 2003 along with a brilliant essay he had written on Japanese poetry. This book is filled with excellent poems, and I enjoyed reading the senryu(s) as opposed to haiku. It's not that I don't like haiku--with writers like Basho, how can you not like the form, but the senryu's lighter spirit allows for more relaxed reading. The poems in the book read well and show the range of Gengoro's poetry**.
what a bummer
an old friend drops by
after quiting the bottle.
Or, take another example:
presented hair tonic
on father's day.
The book contains the Japanese along with drawings on almost ever other page. If you have a light heart and want to experience in the senryu in English, this is a good book to start with.
**Gengoro is the pen name for Tobe Yoshiro. He was a twentieth-century poet.
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