Kobayashi Issa (1763 – 1828) was a Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest. Raised by his grandmother after his mother died and his father remarried, Issa left home at 15 to study haiku. He wandered for many years, finally returning to his hometown at the age of 49. While he wrote more than 20,000 haiku and is considered one of Japan’s most revered poets, his personal life was filled with tragedy, from ongoing financial struggles and the burning of his house to the death of a wife and three children.

Hart Larrabee is an American translator. Born in New York, he majored in Japanese in college and now lives in the little town of Obuse in northern Nagano, Japan. In addition to poetry, Hart also translates non-fiction, particularly in the fields of art, design, and architecture.