Lips Licked Clean: Selected Haiku of Sugita Hisajo, Translated by Alice Wanderer

Description

Transcending her gender restrictions in the haiku world, Hisajo Sugita wrote haiku of the female gaze: the mundanities of nursing a baby & doing the laundry, the eroticism of unloosened kimono sashes & moon-lit naked skin, and the melding of the spiritual & everyday while combing her hair under the Milky Way. Finally, more great Japanese women haiku poets like Hisajo will be known outside of Japan through the gift of these comprehensive selections and fine translations of Alice Wanderer. The luminosity of Hisajo’s imagery and depth of her words reverberate long after the last page is turned.
蝶追うて春山深く迷ひけり
chō ōte haruyama fukaku mayoikeri

chasing a butterfly
deep into spring mountains
I lost my way

Kigo: 蝶 chō, butterfly.

忍び来て摘むは誰が子ぞ紅苺
shinobikite tsumu wa ta ga ko zo beni ichigo

sneaking in
to pick the red strawberries —
whose child could it be?

Kigo: 苺 ichigo, strawberry/strawberries.

嚴寒ぞ遂にうがちし岩襖
genkan zo tsui ni ugachishi iwa fusuma

freezing cold —
he pierces the final
curtain of rock

Kigo: 嚴寒 genkan, freezing cold. This haiku refers to Zenkai, a monk, who, to atone for a murder, took 30 years of his life to chisel a tunnel through a rock in order to create a safe passage to a local shrine. The tunnel was finished in 1763.

ISBN: 978-1-947271-85-2
Pages: 154
Size: 4.25″ x 6.5″
Binding: perfect softbound
Year Published: 2022