by Kelly
This slim book, Love Haiku:Masajo Suzuki’s Lifetime of Love, had me swooning like a ten year-old over the Jonas Brothers.
It was so heartbreaking, so romantic, so utterly touching. Oh! I’m so glad I found it.
I found it after reading Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan. In that book, Donegan highlights individual haiku by various authors and pulls a life lesson from each. Donegan shared a love haiku written by Suzuki and that one tiny three-line poem was enough to send me out into the Internet seeking an entire book of Suzuki’s work.
Suzuki is a contempoaray Japanese haiku poet. Passion fules her haiku. Once I learned her life story, it was easy to understand why.
Suzuki married a man and had a daughter. But then her husband disappeared. Just up and disappeared. He was never seen or heard from again.
Then, her sister died, leaving behind a husband and four children. Because Suzuki was without a husband, she was married off to her sister’s widower and was expected to help raise her sister’s kids.
Suzuki didn’t love her second husband, but out of a sense of duty she moved in with him and worked at his hotel.
While working at the hotel, she met a third man, fell madly in love and started an affair with him that would consume the rest of her life. Even though this third man was married, she ran away from her husband, his hotel and her sister’s kids in order to be his mistress.
This book is a collection of Suzuki’s haiku translated from Japanese. The 150 haiku in this book all relate in some way back to her complicated love life and were selected from Suzuki’s seven published books of haiku.
Here is one that I really liked:
longing for love –
I place a single strawberry
in my mouth
And another:
field of violets –
like those fallen from grace
like the two of us
And another:
my betrayed husband –
I wash his tombstone
with meticulous care
Find it on Amazon:Love Haiku : Masajo Suzuki’s Lifetime of Love
Thanx for pointing out this author and book - I will buy it right away…
Comment by Ásdís Paulsdóttir — June 24, 2009 @ 3:04 pm
[...] I’m thinking this has tremendous gift potential, no? How touched would your special someone be if you scribed your own haiku to be presented in a meaningful jewelry gift? Or if you found and chose that perfectly romantic haiku by Masajo Suzuki? [...]
Pingback by Haiku Bangles by DaddyDDesign — August 26, 2009 @ 10:47 am
Im glad I came across this website.. Its my girlfriends birthday in a couple of weeks and I know she’d love this book. We met in Tokyo , Japan about 10 years ago and we both fell in love with the people and the culture.. thanks!
David
Comment by david — April 3, 2011 @ 4:13 am
Glad to see the overall theme of how powerful love is
, especially considering all of the problems that are going on in Japan lately
Comment by Jennifer — April 11, 2011 @ 3:55 pm
I find it interesting that even though each haiku you have shared was originally written in Japanese, their translations into English still provide a powerfully profound piece.
I was expecting that something would be lost in the translation.
Comment by Taylor — April 12, 2011 @ 12:26 pm
Thanks for posting.
I’m so excited about this book.
Stan Jones - “Wedding Invite Ideas“
Comment by Wedding — April 15, 2011 @ 8:54 pm
Really a nice posting…Love Haiku is one book of haiku I go back to again and again. Whoever said you must take yourself out of haiku couldn’t be more wrong, in my humble opinion. Open any page and you will find beauty… Masajo writes of love, its joy and its pain, along with all the trivialities of daily life, the seasons, weather and chores all in tight neat haiku. Just beautiful….Thanks for Posting…..
Comment by hdb interior design — April 18, 2011 @ 8:35 pm
Suzuki’s story is really interesting. It must be really love that they felt that she even run away from her husband.
As for haiku, I had a little background of it during my high school years, and this blog woke my interest again about this Japanese poetry. Thanks!
Comment by Diana Kim — April 25, 2011 @ 6:32 am