# On Love and Barley

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/matsuo-basho/on-love-and-barley/9780140444599

JSON version (same data): https://www.bookquiver.com/matsuo-basho/on-love-and-barley/9780140444599.json

![On Love and Barley](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/matsuo-basho/on-love-and-barley_978-01-4044-459-9.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2005%3A15%3A22)

- Book: [On Love and Barley](https://www.bookquiver.com/matsuo-basho/on-love-and-barley) ([On Love and Barley.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/matsuo-basho/on-love-and-barley.md))
- Authors: [Matsuo Bashō](https://www.bookquiver.com/matsuo-basho)
- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4044-459-9
- Pages: 96
- Published: 2003-11-27
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Basho, one of the greatest of Japanese poets and the master of haiku, was also a Buddhist monk and a life-long traveller. His poems combine 'karumi', or lightness of touch, with the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each poem evokes the natural world - the cherry blossom, the leaping frog, the summer moon or the winter snow - suggesting the smallness of human life in comparison to the vastness and drama of nature. Basho himself enjoyed solitude and a life free from possessions, and his haiku are the work of an observant eye and a meditative mind, uncluttered by materialism and alive to the beauty of the world around him.