This website is a refinement of my Haiku of Kobayashi Issa site, especially tailored for young learners. With support from Xavier University of Louisiana, I have gone through my 9,000-plus Issa haiku archive and hand-picked poems that I feel are the most accessible to young students of Japanese culture and haiku. I also have added several learning activities that I hope will enlighten readers in and outside of the classroom.
Before looking at a section of this website, I would recommend that you do a pre-test on the test yourself page. Then, after reading the section in question, test yourself again to see how you improved. Teachers might want to recommend this for their students.
If you are a teacher, I would love to have your advice and feedback. Contact me, David G. Lanoue. Thanks!
photo credit: Michael Dylan Welch
a note about me: I am a professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana. I have been translating haiku, writing haiku and writing articles about haiku since the mid-1980s. 11 of my haiku-related books have appeared in five languages—published in the United States, France, Japan, Bulgaria, India and Serbia. A Spanish translation of one of my books will come out this year (2010). more...