The Basho Variations

The Basho Variations gathers thirty-four translations of Basho's famous haiku. In doing so it enters an august (albeit scanty) lineage of maverick redactions of this poem that include (as inaugural) the "frog pond plop" by Dom Sylvester Hudard and the "fog prondl pop" by Gerry Gilbert. Inspired by Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style, it also joins the company of his earlier "Restricted Translation with Imperfect Level Shift (After Basho)" as well as the Frogments from the Frag Pool: Haiku after Basho by fellow ludicians de langage Gary Barwin and Derek Beaulieu; Beaulieu's solo ((plop)) and Basho's Frogger (a Zen video game) created by the Prize Budget for Boys.

STEVE MCCAFFERY is the author of around 40 books of poetry and criticism published variously in Canada, England, and the United States, McCaffery was a founding member of the sound poetry ensemble Four Horsemen, and a founding theorist of Language Poetry. He has published three previous titles with Book*hug: a revised second edition of Panopticon, The Basho Variations, and Every Way Oakly. He is the two-time recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing, and was shortlisted twice for the Governor General's Award in Poetry. He lives and teaches in Buffalo, NY, where he is the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University at Buffalo.