This anthology brings together hundreds of haiku by the Japanese masters — Basho, Issa, Buson, Shiki — with superb examples from nineteenth — and twentieth-century writers. The pioneering translator R. H. Blyth believed that the spirit of haiku is present in all great poetry; inspired by him, the editor of this volume has included lines from such poets as Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Thoreau, and Hopkins, presented here in haiku form. Following them are haiku and haiku-influenced poems of the twentieth century — from Ezra Pound's «In a Station of the Metro» to William Carlos William's «Prelude to Winter», and from the irreverence of Jack Kerouac to the lyricism of Langston Hughes. The result is a collection as compact, dynamic, and scintillating as the form itself.