What makes haiku "the perfect poetic form"? This episode reads three wonderful haiku by Kobayashi Issa and explores what makes them so moving and fun.

We use the beautiful translations of award-winning poet Robert Haas in The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa. To see these haiku and others online, visit The Poetry Foundation here.

To see (and purchase) the book, see HarperCollins here.

Thank you to HarperCollins for permission to read these translations on our podcast.

For more on Kobayashi Issa, visit the Poetry Foundation here.