Famous Haiku Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Haiku poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous haiku poems. These examples illustrate what a famous haiku poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Basho, Matsuo
...An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again. ...Read more of this...
by
Hall, Donald
...In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from Cemetery Road.
I'm coming! Don't move!
Once again it is April.
Today is the day
we would have been married
twenty-six years.
I finished with April
halfway through March.
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.
Will Hall ever wri...Read more of this...
by
Eluard, Paul
...The wind
Undecided
Rolls a cigarette of air
The mute girl talks:
It is art's imperfection.
This impenetrable speech.
The motor car is truly launched:
Four martyrs' heads
Roll under the wheels.
Ah! a thousand flames, a fire,
The light, a shadow!
The sun is following me.
A feather gives to a hat
A touch of lightness:
The chi...Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...Spring:
A hill without a name
Veiled in morning mist.
The beginning of autumn:
Sea and emerald paddy
Both the same green.
The winds of autumn
Blow: yet still green
The chestnut husks.
A flash of lightning:
Into the gloom
Goes the heron's cry....Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon-beholders....Read more of this...
by
Kerouac, Jack
...The taste
of rain
—Why kneel?...Read more of this...
by
Kerouac, Jack
...Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn....Read more of this...
by
Kerouac, Jack
...The low yellow
moon above the
Quiet lamplit house...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.
Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.
Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.
I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?
Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.
A frog floating
in the drugstore jar:
summer rain on grey pavements.
(after Shiki)
On the porch
in my shorts;
auto lights in the rain.
Another year
has ...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...rling petals, falling leaves! The movement
Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment
Is meaning, Bob says in his Haiku book.
Oh swirling petals, all living things are contingent,
Falling leaves, and transient, and they suffer.
But the Universal is the goal of jokes,
Especially certain ethnic jokes, which taper
Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures
Toward their preposterous Ithaca. There's one
A journalist told me. He heard it while ...Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die. ...Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...In the twilight rain
these brilliant-hued hibiscus . . .
A lovely sunset...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...hree years ago,
There was ‘something between us’ even then;
Watching her write like Eliot every day,
Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat,
Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet;
Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’.
I never got over having her in the room, though
Every day she was impossible in a new way,
Stamping her foot like a naughty Enid Blyton child,
Shouting "Poets don’t do arithmetic!"
Or drawin...Read more of this...
by
Soseki, Natsume
...Over the wintry
forest, winds howl in rage
with no leaves to blow....Read more of this...
by
Issa, Kobayashi
...That wren--
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?...Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...Following are several translations
of the 'Old Pond' poem, which may be
the most famous of all haiku:
Furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
-- Basho
Literal Translation
Fu-ru (old) i-ke (pond) ya,
ka-wa-zu (frog) to-bi-ko-mu (jumping into)
mi-zu (water) no o-to (sound)
The old pond--
a frog jumps in,
sound of water.
Translated by Robert Hass
Old pond...
a frog jumps in
water's sound.
Translated by William...Read more of this...
by
Shiki, Masaoka
...Toward those short trees
We saw a hawk descending
On a day in spring...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...shack that had a sheriff's
notice nailed like a funeral wreath to the front door.
NO TRESPASSING
4/17 OF A HAIKU
Many rivers had flowed past those seventeen years, and
thousands of trout, and now beside the highway and the sheriff's
notice flowed yet another river, the Klamath, and I was
trying to get thirty-five miles downstream to Steelhead,
the place where I was staying.
It was all very simple. No one would stop and pick me up
even though ...Read more of this...
by
Buson, Yosa
...Below are eleven Buson haiku
beginning with the phrase
'The short night--'
The short night--
on the hairy caterpillar
beads of dew.
The short night--
patrolmen
washing in the river.
The short night--
bubbles of crab froth
among the river reeds.
The short night--
a broom thrown away
on the beach.
The short night--
the Oi River
has sunk two feet.
The short...Read more of this...
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