Dream and waking life. Reality and illusion. Where does one begin and the other end? This question radiates at the heart of Nagata Koi's impressionistic haiku.
is my head a hole? -- fallen camellia
Koi's life spanned almost the entire century, and much of it was devoted to a philosophical inquiry into the nature of real and unreal, art and life, matter and nothingness. "I believe that poetry is what changes existence into illusion. Or you might say it changes reality into illusion," Koi writes. And as his haiku embodies this inquiry, it is more quest than conquest.