The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Penguin Classics · first published 1702 · 176 pages
Five travel sketches in prose and haiku by a seventeenth-century poet, among them his long walk into the north.
Light-footed and spare, the prose moves between road, weather, and poem with very little weight.
For a night of planning a long walk.
About this book
Matsuo Bashō, the haiku poet, spent much of his later life on foot, setting out from Edo with little more than a hat and a few belongings. These sketches follow his journeys to old shrines, famous places, and the homes of friends, mixing plain prose with short poems. The longest walk carries him deep into the remote north. What stays is a way of traveling lightly and looking closely.