The Basho Variations

The Basho Variations gathers thirty-four translations of Basho’s famous haiku. In doing so it enters an august (albeit scanty) lineage of maverick redactions of this poem that include (as inaugural) the ‘frog pond plop’ by Dom Sylvester Huédard and the ‘fog prondl pop’ by bp Nichol. Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, it also joins the company of his earlier ‘Restricted Translation with Imperfect Level Shift (After Basho)’ as well as the Frogments from the Frag Pool: Haiku after Basho by fellow ludicians de langage Gary Barwin and Derek Beaulieu; Beaulieu’s solo ((plop)) and Basho’s Frogger (a Zen video game) created by the Prize Budget for Boys.

Steve McCaffery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and criticism, most recently Crime Scenes. Two further titles are due to appear in 2007: Paradigm of the Tinctures (with illustrations by Alan Halsey) and Slightly Left of Thinking. Poems and Postcognitions. His monumental two volume selected Seven Pages Missing was published in 2002. After many years living in Toronto, he now lives in Buffalo where he is the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters and Director of the UB Poetics Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

The Dialogic Basho

Basho: i want a poem
Frog: i want a pond

Basho: poematic pondness
Frog: pondific poesis

Basho: where are you?
Frog: where you are