More than 100 Frogs
old pond
a frog jumps in
(sound of water)
–Basho
That haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) is perhaps the best known haiku in the world. In fact, there’s a now classic collection One Hundred Frogs by Hiroaki Sato (Weatherhill, 1983) that has 100 different interpretations/translations of Basho’s haiku. They cover more than a century’s worth of poets from Shiki to Allen Ginsberg and range from literal translations to prose and sonnet versions.
I was drawn back to this compilation by the recent publication of notebook pages by Canadian poet bpNichol (1944-1988). Published on the occasion of what would have been his 80th birthday, some lines of poetry from the notebooks of bpNichol (Coach House Books, 2024) includes 80 pieces of work from the 1980s. Among the selections is this:
He translated Basho’s haiku with one letter! (Thinking about the title, the use of the word “plop” to translate “the sound of water” was used by RH Blyth in his translation, which in the 1950s and 1960s were well known. See AHOPC #18.) Discovering this in turn led me back to a book of variations by bpNichol (Coach House Books, 2013) and another interpretation of Basho’s haiku (which also appeared in AHOPC #13) by Nichol:
Which then circled me back to 100 Frogs — and an idea: Let’s create a haiku comics version of 100 Frogs! Send me your interpretation/translation of Basho’s haiku as a comic and I’ll share them here as they come in. Send as jpg to clash1958@gmail.com. Ed. note: Scroll to bottom to see submissions so far.
To get things rolling, here are two versions I made — the first one about 10 years ago as a class assignment and the second one last year as part of a series “Reading Basho.”
Here are your interpretations:
Timeline: Now
Warning: This incomplete history maps my journey as a poet learning about comics and doesn’t follow a strict chronological order.
JB 