Missing a kick
at the icebox door
It closed anyway.
-Jack Kerouac
My first introduction to haiku was through Jack Kerouac. As an avid reader of his work, I found my way at some point years ago to his Scattered Poems. Within that collection, his haiku appeared. From there, I began to explore and appreciate haiku.
Jack Kerouac explained Haiku this way, “The ‘Haiku’ was invented and developed over hundreds of years in Japan to be a complete poem in seventeen syllables and to pack in a whole vision of life in three short lines. A ‘Western Haiku’ need not concern itself with the seventeen syllables since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabillic Japanese. I propose that the ‘Western Haiku’ simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language.”
William Higgins in his book, The Haiku Handbook: how to write, share, and teach haiku, wrote, “Being small, haiku lend themselves especially to sharing small, intimate things. By recognizing the intimate things that touch us we come to know and appreciate our world and ourselves more. By sharing these things with others we let them into our lives in a very special, personal way.”
A few favorites:
A day of quiet gladness,-
Mount Fuji is veiled
In misty rain.
-Basho
evening breeze…
water laps the legs
of the blue heron
-Yosa Buson
the little bird
hopping
across the parking lot
-William Higginson
The summer chair
rocking by itself
In the blizzard
-Jack Kerouac
Website of interest:
The Haiku Society of America
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/res-hsa-contests.htm
My picks:
Book of Haikus- Jack Kerouac 811.54 KER
Cool Melons-Turn to Frogs! : the life and poems of Issa- story and translations by Matthew Golub J 895.6 GOL
The Haiku Handbook- William Higgins 811 HIG
Haiku Landscapes in the sun, wind, rain and snow- Stephen Addiss 811 ADD
