Guest Blog Two: Reading Still Opens New Worlds

Yesterday I posted my friend C.’s first guest blog entry, on “The Pleasures of Re-reading”; today I am very pleased to post, below, her second guest entry, “Reading Still Opens New Worlds.” Thank you, C., for these two illuminating entries!

C.:
"Thanks to an extraordinary teacher, I first went to Japan almost forty years ago. Since then, the land, the history, the people, and the culture of Japan have enriched my life immeasurably. My bookcases bulge with books about Dai Nippon. But with all these years and all those books, there are some things Japanese that I never really "got." Until four years ago haiku was a good example. I suppose I thought about haiku the way Emily Dickinson used to be thought of -- precious (horrors!). So when I was invited to a talk at the Japanese Embassy's Culture and Information Center by Abigail Friedman, the author of "The Haiku Apprentice" (Stone Bridge Press, 2006), I decided to go so I could hear what she had to say and get a copy of the book for my English-speaking friend in Japan who is a haiku devotee. At the lecture I encountered another extraordinary teacher. Ms. Friedman's talk and her book lifted the top off my head and opened my heart to the many pleasures of haiku. Since then I've been swimming happily in Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki, Richard Wright, and other American haiku poets. I've also been exploring translations and anthologies of Japanese poetry -- haiku and other forms -- such as "The Manyoshu" (Ten Thousand Leaves) and "Hyakunin Isshu" (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each). One extraordinary book has yielded years of beauty already and assured more such pleasures in the future."