Issa translator Daniel G. Lanoue has a great web site that includes a huge, searchable database of haiku by Issa. There's also a mailing list: sign up, and you'll get one haiku by Issa every day. Cool stuff!

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In the Japan Times, Donald Richie reviews a new collection of Basho translations by David Landis Barnhill. Barnhill's book includes 724 of the 980 haiku Basho wrote, making it the largest English-language Basho collection now in print. Here's a link to buy that book:

Sometimes a real haiku pops up unexpectedly in an American newspaper. Case in point: This haiku by Kobori-Enshiu, quoted in the August 19 edition of the Sun Herald, a newspaper in southern Mississippi. "A cluster of summer trees/ A bit of the sea/ A pale evening moon." The accompanying short prose by George Thatcher is almost a haibun itself.

A tip of the hat to retiring California State Assemblyman John Longville (D-Rialto), who apparently liked to present legislative bills as haiku.

According to the AP, the closing session of the California Assembly included a brief tribute to Longville:

"What will we all do/when you're not here presenting/bills in haiku form?'' said Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara.

Longville responded in kind: "Thank you, all my friends/This was most unexpected./I will miss you all.''