Haiku

Haiku is a form of poetry which is written in seventeen syllables. Each poem contains a word that refers to the season described in the haiku. The following haiku are by the three greatest haiku poets of Japan. (All translations are by R. H. Blyth)

Spreading a straw mat in the field

At the plum blossoms.

I sat and gazed

 Basho

It is deep autumn;

My neighbour-

How does he live?

Buston

The autumn storm;

A prostitute shack,

At 24 cents a time.

Issa

Many westerns have attempted to write haiku. Some have succeeded.

In a railroad yard,

bound for a world with flowers,

butterfly and I.

James Hackett

In my medicine cabinet

the winter flies

died of old age.

Jack Kerouac

Access

R. H. Blyth has written the finest books on haiku in the English language. Harold Henderson was the first to make translations; they rhyme, which misses the point. Blyth has two multivolumed works which cover haiku and make it clear: Haiku, in four volumes: Eastern Culture, Spring, Summer-Autumn, Autumn-Winter;and A History of Haiku, in two volumes.

James Hackett has published The Way Of Haiku. Jack Kerouac’s haiku were remembered by Allen Ginsberg in an interview published in The Paris Review, No. 37, Spring 1996.