The Art of Haiku
Stephen Addiss

If you enjoy short poems or delightful visual art, this book is for you. It was my first introduction to haiga, visual art specifically created to accompany haiku. Addiss illustrates his work liberally with exemplary poems and samples of visual works created to accompany them, stressing the point that they were created to be enjoyed together. He traces the history of short form poetry in Japanese society, beginning with tanka, a five line form poem popular early in the previous millennium and continued into the present day, and contrasts it with the Chinese style poetry which was popular in the imperial court. He follows this with biographies of the three acknowledged masters of Haiku and Haiban, Basho (17th century), Buson (18h century)and Issa (19th century). The chapters on these three include illustrations of their artwork, as do the sections on Zen poets and early 20th century haiku poets. He ends the work at World War II, stating that Haiku has since become a world wide phenomenon, and a description of it in recent years would fill another book. I found it a delightful read.

I did experience some difficulty navigating between the text and the illustrations on my Kindle Fire. Apparently the publishers originally placed the illustrations in the center of the book and the clickable links in the Kindle edition were difficult to operate with touch screen. The screen size also made some of the illustrations difficult to view. I will try looking at it with the Kindle App on my laptop, 

I have now acquired a hardbound copy. Although I am happy with the other books in my kindle library, I like the size and accessibility of the illustrations in the bound copy better than the ebook, in this particular case.