Henderson
briefly discussed Japanese norms, both for content
and form, emphasizing what has since often been
overlooked, namely that the norms are just that—norms,
not hard-and-fast rules. He went on to enunciate
the differences between what is termed a syllable
in Japanese and in English and questioned the suitability
for English-language haiku poets of syllable-counting
in the Japanese way. Indeed, haiku prosody has remained
a singularly divisive issue within the community
of haiku poets.
The
relationship of haiku to Zen is another question
that has absorbed the attention of the haiku community
throughout its development. Unquestionably, the
early impressions were that haiku were inextricably
linked with Zen. The Blyth Haiku volumes
and the writings on Zen by D.T. Suzuki influenced
the Beat poets in the 1950s either directly or through
the popular writings of Alan Watts.[5]
Other
scholarly and popular books began appearing in the
1950s as well. The Anthology of Japanese Literature compiled and edited by Donald Keene, an academic
researcher, was published in 1955, adding to available
haiku translations in sections entitled “The
Narrow Road of Oku” (Oku no hosomichi)
by Bashô, “Conversations with Kyorai” (Kyoraishô) by Kyorai, a disciple of
Bashô, and including “Haiku of the Middle
and Late Tokugawa Period” as translated by
Henderson. A work titled Haikai and Haiku
was produced by a special committee under the chairmanship
of Sanki Ichikawa and published in 1958 in Tokyo.
The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, a trade
book edited in England by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony
Thwaite and published in 1964, contained 262 haiku
and senryu, including some from the early 20th century.
The
1950s saw the publication of the first of a series
of small volumes of the Peter Pauper Press series
of haiku translations. The first three (Japanese
Haiku, 1955–56; The Four Seasons,
1958; Cherry Blossoms, 1960) were edited
and translated by Peter Beilenson; the fourth (Haiku
Harvest, 1962), left unfinished at Beilenson’s
death, was completed by Harry Behn, whose own volumes
of haiku translations were published by the children’s
division of Harcourt, Brace under the titles Cricket
Songs (1964) and More Cricket Songs (1971).
Selections from the vest-pocket-sized Peter Pauper
Press books were published in 1968 as A Haiku
Garland and in 1970 as Lotus Blossoms,
and excerpts from the first three appeared as A
Little Treasury of Haiku from Avenel Books in
1980. Although it is explained in the preface to
the first Peter Pauper volume, Beilenson’s
doubling up of the second line in each verse to
accommodate woodcut illustrations resulted in what
appeared to be an awkward four-line form for the
haiku. No reference to the Japanese original, aside
from the author’s name, was given, and haiku
scholars have faulted the fidelity of the Beilensen
and Behn translations. Nevertheless, the books sold
well and were the first introduction to haiku for
many Western readers.
In
the middle years of the twentieth century, authors
here and there—most of them probably unaware
that the literary lions were not yet certain that
haiku could be written in English — were beginning
to do just that. Among the earliest published collections
of haiku in America were Stella Knight Ruess’s Poems in Trees (1930) and Kenneth Lawrence
Beaudoin’s January Haiku and Eye-Poems (holograph edition, 1950). William Seltzer’s Poems (1959) included twelve haiku; Álvaro
Cardona-Hine published The Gathering Wave in 1961, and Frank Ankenbrand, Jr.’s Plum
Blossom Scrolls, and James Kritzeck’s Twenty-five
Haiku appeared in the following year.
The
American Haiku Mainstream
By
1960, then, the haiku had entered the radar of American
poets and attracted a few disciples, mainly academics
and others familiar with Japanese culture. A variety
of translations, some better and some worse, were
available, haiku scholarship had begun, writing
haiku in English had been proved feasible, and a
few souls were beginning to try their own hand at
the exotic Japanese verse. Both translations and
original haiku at this time were often rhymed and
titled, and almost everyone tried to copy the Japanese
5–7–5 syllabic form. The foundations of
an American haiku movement were laid.
The
appearance in 1963 of American Haiku was
an important landmark. This journal and those that
followed have been the backbone of the American
haiku movement, providing a sense of community for
nonprofessional poets scattered across the county,
a forum for critiquing and discussion one another’s
work, and a road map for the development of the
genre. Besides publishing original haiku, American
Haiku promoted the discussion of both techniques
and the directions that haiku in the West might
take. Although some haiku had been published here
and there in small magazines, American Haiku
was the first publication devoted solely to haiku
(and the related senryu) written in the English
language. Twice a year for six years this charming
magazine went out to an increasing number of poets
and others interested in English-language haiku,
setting a high standard for the periodicals that
would follow. American Haiku printed seminal
articles about haiku craft and esthetics and featured
book reviews, some written with a startling frankness
that has rarely been repeated in the years since.
Issue number one was published in Platteville, Wis.,
under the joint editorship of James Bull and Don
Eulert. Over the years various editors had a hand
in producing American Haiku, including Clement
Hoyt, Robert Spiess, Walter H. Kerr, Gustave Keyser,
Joyce W. Webb, and Gary Brower. Especially under
Hoyt’s editorship American Haiku became
a bastion of traditional 5–7–5 haiku.
In
the spring of 1967 Eric Amann produced the first
small issue of Haiku in Toronto, Ont. Although
more oriented toward Zen than American Haiku
and other magazines of the time, Haiku was
nevertheless open to experimentation in the poems,
in format of the magazine, and in the presentation
of Japanese translations. Amann was interested in
the whole picture and printed bilingual versions
of Spanish and German haiku plus modern Japanese
haiku. Jack Cain’s “Paris,” thought
to be the first haibun (prose poem with haiku) in
English, was reprinted here in 1969. Amann turned Haiku over to William J. Higginson in the
spring of 1971. Continuing to publish until 1976,
Higginson focused on interaction between modern
poetry and haiku, and his inclusion of haiku sequences
and linked forms, senryu, and haibun was of special
interest and value. Haiku West, edited and
published by Leroy Kanterman in New York City, appeared
twice a year from June 1967 until January 1975.
More traditionally oriented, the magazine published
many quality haiku and senryu. After the formation
of the Haiku Society of America in the winter of
1968–69, Haiku West served as its voice.
Other early periodicals included SCTH (Sonnet
Cinquain Tanka Haiku — 1964–80) edited
by Rhoda De Long Jewell, and The Blue Print,
a small haiku paper that circulated for a time around
1968–69.
Other
Haiku Eddies and Currents
Another
way of defining the “mainstream” American
haiku movement is to look at the other currents
that flowed from the early haiku experts, especially
Blyth. These include, first, the Beat generation,
which was attracted to Oriental philosophies and
literary genres. Kenneth Rexroth translated Japanese
haiku in the 1950s. Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Diane
Di Prima, and Allen Ginsberg were writing verses
in this period and showing an insight into the nature
of haiku. The Beats were important to the haiku
movement mostly for having “been there, done
that,” but little of lasting influence on haiku
in America remains from them except the luster of
their names.[6]
Likewise,
a few African American poets have explored haiku,
tapping the same roots as the mainstream practitioners
and the Beats, but developing unique content and
esthetics along the way. These include Etheridge
Knight, who wrote of his eight years in prison with
his raw lyrics and black esthetic in the usual haiku
form and in haiku sequences.[7] Robert Hayden, Julius
Lester, Richard Wright, Randolph Nelson Levy, and
Sonia Sanchez [8] were prominent names in this stream
of haiku writing. To a greater or lesser extent
all these poets harness the brevity of the haiku
form to encapsulate and add impact to a social message.
Poets writing in this current have not much influenced
mainstream haiku — as Higginson writes, “the
haiku forms a small, almost innocuous portion of
their whole work” (“Afro-American Haiku”
10) — nor has the haiku genre yet had much
influence on black American writing.
A
few Native American poets have explored haiku as
well. Writer and scholar Gerald Vizenor has found
a relationship between the Chippewa (Ojibway, Anishinaabe)
dream song and the Japanese haiku that he was exposed
to when he was a soldier in the Far East. He has
plumbed these connections in several books of lyrical
haiku beginning in 1964.[9] The verses of poets
such as Raven Hail (Cherokee), Nora Marks Dauenhauer
(Tlingit), and Mary TallMountain (native Alaskan)
show the poets on intimate terms with nature and
employ the terseness and structure of traditional
haiku to bring home the spiritual condi-tion of
their people.[10] William Oandasan (Yuki) also published
a number of haiku collections.
Many
long-form poets have at one time or another experimented
with haiku, and some have translated the Japanese
classics as well. Their translations, in fact, are
generally of greater interest than their original
work in the genre. Available in several earlier,
mainly unsatisfactory renderings, Oku no hosomichi
was sensitively translated by poet Cid Corman and
Susumu Kamaike and published in 1968 as Back
Roads to Far Towns. Bashô’s famous
travel journal was given a spare, sensitive treatment,
with additional notes available for the Western
reader. Over the years Corman added several other
books of fine haiku translations [11] as well as
Zen-tinged poetry of his own. Robert Bly has translated
Bashô and Shiki [12] but made it clear in
an exchange of letters with Cor van den Heuvel in
1973–74 that, while he admires Bashô’s
haiku, he finds very little of merit in English-language
haiku.[13] Likewise Robert Hass and Sam Hamill came
out with trade books of translations of the Japanese
classics but published few, if any, haiku themselves,
and both have indicated their lack of enthusiasm
for English-language haiku.[14] Yvor Winters wrote
haiku-like one-line poems in an Imagist mode but
later disowned them. Charles Henri Ford reportedly
wrote a haiku every day.[15] Richard Wilbur has
long used rhymed, image-rich tercets in poems such
as “Alatus” in his 1988 New and Collected
Poems and “Zea” and “Signatures” in his 2001 collection Mayflies.[16] In The
Inner Room, James Merrill occasionally interrupts
the flow of a prose poem with a stanza in haiku
form. Recently, the journal Modern Haiku has featured new haiku by Billy Collins, Sharon
Olds, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Lawrence
Ferlinghetti in its pages.[17] Paul Muldoon, who
earlier had written rhymed sequences of “language
haiku,” also was published in Modern Haiku.[18]
Among other mainstream authors and poets who have
dabbled at haiku are E.E. Cummings,[19] Hayden Carruth,
J.D. Salinger, William Stafford, Seamus Heaney,[20]
Wendy Cope,[21] Tom Disch, John Updike, W.S. Merwin,
Leonard Cohen, Richard Brautigan,[22] Paul Goodman,[23]
John Ashbery, and Donald Hall (see references at
Works Cited).
Finally,
mention needs to be made of haiku written within
the Japanese American community, although with a
very few exceptions (see the discussion of the Yuki
Teikei Haiku Society, below), there has been almost
no contact between English-language and Japanese-language
haiku groups and only limited involvement of Japanese
Americans in the English-language haiku movement.
Because haiku groups in Japan are normally formed
around a sensei, or haiku master, it is tempting
to conclude that within the Japanese American community
it is not considered possible to sustain a respectable
group absent a sensei. Still, haiku and senryu groups
have formed in America, often under the aegis of
Buddhist temples and other Japanese cultural centers.
Haiku groups that were formed in the 1930s in California
continued under the even more trying circumstances
of the internment camps set up by the U.S. government
to isolate Japanese American during World War II.
A fine collection of the haiku of some of these
groups writing in the Kaiko (“Crimson Sea”)
style of the avant-garde Japanese poet Nakatsuka
Ippekirô was gathered by Violet Kazue de Cristoforo
and published in 1997 in May Sky.[24]
The
Haiku Society of America
As
more and more people in America became aware of
haiku, inevitably they became aware of one another
as well. They began to meet to discuss their readings,
debate haiku form and esthetics, and critique their
own writings. American haiku was beginning to get
organized. In 1956 Helen Stiles Chenoweth organized
what is likely the first informal haiku discussion
group in America, the Writers Roundtable of Los
Altos, Calif., to foster creative writing, and for
at least a decade members of the group studied and
wrote haiku. A collection of their work, Borrowed
Water, was published in 1966.
The
Haiku Society of America, created in the winter
of 1968–69, was the first formally structured
organization devoted solely to Western haiku, and
it remained the only one for a number of years.
On the evening of Oct. 23, 1968, twenty-three men
and women met at Asia House in New York City. Harold
E. Henderson, with help from Leroy Kanterman and
encouragement from the Japan Society of New York,
was responsible for the meeting.[25] Kanterman was
chosen to head the group that was known at first
simply as the Haiku Society. Regular monthly meetings
were scheduled, and these were usually held in rooms
of the Asia Society or at the offices of the Japan
Society. Simple bylaws were drawn up and adopted
at the April 1969 meeting. With this, the group
became the Haiku Society of America, with membership
open to all interested in haiku upon payment of
nominal dues. Henderson was named honorary president
and he took an active and dedicated interest in
the group until his death.
Word
of the Society spread rapidly, and inquiries soon
arrived from states outside the New York City area.
With a growing membership, the Society steadily
expanded activities under the succeeding presidents.[26]
Early meetings concentrated on discussion and criticism
of submitted haiku. Beginning in 1973, however,
meetings became more structured and focused on matters
of historical background, followed by a series of
programs on craft and technique. In
1974 Society members were invited for the first
time to read haiku under the cherry blossoms at
the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, an event that has continued
each spring since.
At
these early meetings every effort was made to include
materials from members unable to attend, and comprehensive
Minutes were sent out regularly. These Minutes formed
a valuable resource for haiku scholars and poets.
In fact, the HSA soon became something of a national
clearing house for haiku information, and a number
of specific projects were undertaken by the members.
For example, when a Society survey of English reference
works showed inadequate and misleading definitions,
a committee composed of Anita Virgil and William
J. Higginson worked with Professor Henderson to
develop valid definitions for haiku and the related
terms hokku, senryu, and haikai. “Haiku” was defined as follows (with slight
later amendments):
The
HSA Minutes, which had become the more formal Minutes & Proceedings in 1975, had long been popular
with members. By 1978 the idea for an HSA magazine
was beginning to take shape. The catalyst and driving
force behind this idea was Lilli Tanzer, and she
became the editor of HSA’s Frogpond
when it began publication that year. (See the discussion
of Frogpond, below.) Under the editorship
of HSA Secretary Doris Heitmeyer, the Minutes & Proceedings began to include news of haiku
developments beyond the Society and eventually evolved
into a quarterly newsletter.[27] The news needs
of the HSA membership were brought into the electronic
age with the launch in 1998 of an HSA Web site.[28]
Other
National and Regional Organizations
As
the HSA was expanding activities in the New York
area in the 1970s, national and local haiku groups
were forming elsewhere. In Portland, Ore., shortly
before the end of 1974, Lorraine Ellis Harr formed
the Western World Haiku Society, which published
a newsletter and sponsored annual haiku contests
comprising many categories, with winners published
in a series of WWHS anthologies.
One
of the interesting developments of this period began
with the founding in 1975 of an English-language
division of the Yukuhari Haiku Society, a venerable
Japanese organization with headquarters in Tokyo,
that was dedicated to yuki teikei, or traditional
haiku written in seventeen syllables and using a
season word. The group took seed in the San Francisco
area and flourished under the care of Kiyoshi and
Kiyoko Tokutomi. Close ties were maintained with
the home society in Japan, but in January 1979 this
group became an independent organization, the Yuki
Teikei Haiku Society of the U.S.A. and Canada. The
first issue of the YTHS’s Haiku Journal
appeared in mid-1977. It ceased publication, but
a second publication, Geppo, continued. In
addition to regular meetings, which have included
traditional Japanese-style events such as moon-viewing
parties, the YTHS has held a retreat at Asilomar,
Calif., each autumn. A southern California branch
of the YTHS was formed in autumn 1997 on the initiative
of Jerry Ball and meets monthly in Long Beach.
The
North Carolina Haiku Society, founded in 1979 by
Rebecca Ball Rust with a nucleus of seventeen members,
for some years conducted a successful annual haiku
contest, has sponsored an annual Haiku Holiday,
and published a newsletter, Pine Needles.
The Rockland County (New York) Haiku Society was
launched in the 1980s and was still active in 2002.
Sue-Stapleton Tkach and Mary Lou Bittle-DeLapa of
Rochester, N.Y., were the founders of Haiku PUNY
(Haiku Poets of Upstate New York), in April 1989.
Haiku meetings were also held in Milwaukee, Wis.,
in these early years.
Two anchor haiku groups were formed in 1988–89,
one on either end of the country. The Boston Haiku
Society incorporated in September 1988 at the Kaji
Aso Studio and has met monthly since. Members of
the group are very active in holding readings throughout
the Boston area, and they have published a monthly
newsletter and three anthologies of members’ work.[29]
Activity
was increasing among California haiku poets, especially
in northern California, where much of the early
American haiku activity had taken place. In the
mid-1980s, largely due to the efforts of Garry Gay
and Jerry Kilbride, a group was formed that at an
inaugural meeting in Oakland on Feb. 5, 1989, became
the Haiku Poets of Northern California. The membership
of HPNC is probably the largest of any regional
group in the country. It has been involved in activities
that include regular meetings with informative programs,
public readings, and the issuing of haiku books
through the group’s own publisher, Two Autumns
Press. HPNC has been served by high-quality publications
with Woodnotes and later Mariposa.
The
HPNC served as something of a West Coast counterweight
to the Haiku Society of America on the East Coast.
In 1991 for the first time the HSA elected a president — appropriately, Garry Gay — who did not
live on the East Coast, and a giant step was accomplished
toward bringing the nation’s haiku poets together.
A system of regional coordinators was adopted by
the HSA in 1993 to try to bring the benefits of
HSA membership more equitably to other parts of
the country. The HSA never specifically sought to
create local haiku groups or chapters, however,
nor is there any provision in its charter that gov-erns
HSA relationships with other haiku groups in the
U.S. or abroad.
Throughout
the 1990s, the growth of the haiku movement continued
to be reflected in the formation of new groups in
major metropolitan centers. The Spring Street Haiku
Group was organized by Dee Evetts and included,
by invitation, some of the best of the New York
City haiku poets. Especially noteworthy among the
group’s activities was the publication annually
since 1993 of a series of members’ anthologies
in chapbook format. In 1994 the group also organized
Haiku on 42nd Street, a selection of haiku and senryu
by twenty-six New York area poets, that was displayed
for six months on the marquees of empty movie theaters
on 42nd Street at Times Square and caught the attention
of the national media. In early September 1995 a
group of poets from the Washington, D.C., area decided
to get together regularly to discuss haiku; they
took for their club the name “Towpath,”
from the scenic pathway of the historic C & O Canal along the Potomac River. The Richmond (Va.)
Haiku Workshop was formed in September 1996 by Josh
Hockensmith and Stephen Addiss; the group took over
publishing the journal South by Southeast in 1999.
Nine enthusiasts from the Chicago area met on January
21, 1996 to form Chi-ku, the Chicago-area haiku
group.
A
study group calling itself High Country Haiku formed
in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1996, and another
formed in Boulder, Colo., in the summer of 1998
following a workshop given at the Naropa Institute
(now Naropa University) by Zen teacher Clark Strand.
The Arkansas Haiku Society was formed in Hot Springs,
and the Western Massachusetts Haiku Group, centering
on poets Larry Kimmel and Carol Purington in Colrain,
Mass., is active. Pinecone, the North Georgia Haiku
Society, began in October 1996 and meets bimonthly
in the Atlanta area.
In
spring 1999 Jerry Ball and Fumio Ogoshi founded
the Southern California Haiku Study Group in Long
Beach. A group catalyzed by Bruce Ross was active
in Burlington, Vt., in the late 1990s. The Salt
City Haiku Group was announced by Susan Scholl in
the autumn of 1999 for Syracuse, N.Y.-area poets.
The Central Valley Haiku Club began informally in
Sacramento, Calif., in 1999. Further south, monthly
meetings of the Haiku Poets of San Diego, a new
group announced in the fall of 2000 by Naia, were
taking place. The Delaware River Haiku Group was
launched in May 2001 replacing the Mid-Atlantic
Region Haiku Workshops, all-day Saturday meetings
that had been held annually between 1997 and 2000
in the Wilmington, Del.–Philadelphia area.
A New Orleans chapter of the HSA was organized in
early 2002 and the Fort Worth (Texas) Haiku Society
came together under the direction of Cliff and Brenda
Roberts at about the same time. By the first years
of the new century, haiku groups were springing
up with regularity and vigor across the country
and HSA membership was approaching 1,000.
Meetings
and Conferences
The
growing interest in the techniques of the haiku
genre as well as in the artistic quality of the
poems being produced led to larger-scale gatherings.
The First Symposium on English-Language Haiku, May
16, 1967, was hosted by Wisconsin State University,
Platteville. Clement Hoyt, Robert Spiess, and James
Bull — all associated with American Haiku — presented papers that were later published
in the journal. The First International Haiku Festival,
organized in Philadelphia by Nicholas Virgilio on
May 1, 1971, was a daylong gathering featured both
Western haiku and traditional Japanese arts. Three
years later, as a kind of celebration of the publication
of Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology,
poet and professor David Lloyd of Glassboro State
College in New Jersey organized a second Haiku Festival
at the college. Haiku poets from the eastern seaboard,
college students, and others gathered in Glassboro
on May 5–6, 1974, for readings, workshops,
and formal and in-formal discussions. The 20th anniversary
of the founding of the HSA was the occasion for
a number of observations in 1988, including the
Roseliep Haiku Celebration at Loras College in Dubuque,
Iowa, organized by Bill Pauly, Lee Gurga, and Sister
Mary Thomas Eulberg, in August. On October 15 there
was another gathering of Midwest haiku poets, this
time for a day-long meeting in honor of the HSA
at Principia College in Elsah, Ill. Mary Lu Fennell
organized the conference and Lee Gurga planned the
program. A gala weekend was held on November 4–6,
1988, at New York City’s 7th Regiment Armory
and later at the Kenilworth Hotel in Spring Lake,
N.J., on the Atlantic Ocean for two days of fellowship,
fun, and renku-writing.
The
first gathering of an important new series of haiku
conferences under the name Haiku North America was
launched August 23–25, 1991, at Las Positas
College in Livermore, Calif., where two of the organizers,
Jerry Ball and David Wright, were faculty members.
This was the first conference to bring to-gether
haiku poets from all parts of the continent and
to garner support from the major haiku organizations
in the United States and Canada. The keynote address,
entitled “North America and the Democracy of
Haiku,” was given by William J. Higginson.
The second conference in the series was held July
15–18, 1993, again at Las Positas College.
The keynote addresses were given by Zen specialist
and poet James W. Hackett and translator Jane Hirschfield.
Canadian poets, coordinated by Marshall Hryciuk
and Keith Southward, hosted more than one hundred
attendees at the third HNA conference, July 14–16,
1995, at the Ryerson Polytechnic Institute (now
University) in Toronto. The fourth meeting in the
HNA series took place July 24–27, 1997, at
Portland State University in Oregon, organized by
Margaret Chula, Cherie Hunter Day, and Ce Rosenow.
Featured speakers were haiku scholar Janine Beichman
and Sam Hamill, poet and publisher of Copper Canyon
Press. Haiku North America 1999 — Chicago was
organized retreat-style at Northwestern University
in Evanston, Ill., July 8–11, 1999 by Sara
Brant, Joseph Kirschner, Lidia Rozmus, and Charles
Trumbull. Keynote speaker Gerald Vizenor explored
“Haiku Culturalism.”[30] The sixth HNA
meeting, held June 28–July 1 in Boston, and
organized by Raffael de Gruttola, Karen Klein, and
Judson Evans, drew 152 registrants from 8 countries.
Higginson was again keynote speaker. Haiku North
America 2003 was planned by Pamela Miller Ness,
John Stevenson, and Stanford Forrester and convened
in June–July in New York City. HNA 2005 was
scheduled to take place in September 2005 in Port
Townsend, Wash.
Haiku
Contests and Awards
In
the early years interest in haiku was stimulated
across the United States by several contests sponsored
by Japan Air Lines. In 1964 something over 41,000
haiku were submitted to their National Haiku Contest.
Seventeen contests conducted by radio stations in
different parts of the country screened the entries,
and five winners from each local contest were submitted
for final judging by Alan Watts. The selection of
Watts, not himself a haiku poet but rather an expert
on Zen, to judge this seminal contest reinforced
the notion that haiku is informed by Zen and undoubtedly
influenced the course of American haiku for years
to come. Japan Air Lines published the 85 national
entries in a booklet entitled Haiku ’64.
James W. Hackett won the grand prize of two round-trip
tickets to Japan. In the winter of 1987–88
JAL, in association with Haiku Canada and the Haiku
Society of America, organized an English Haiku Contest
for residents of Canada and the United States. Kazuo
Satô, the top Japanese expert on foreign haiku,
was a leading force in the creation of the contest,
with five key figures in the East Coast haiku establishment
— Cor van den Heuvel, William J. Higginson,
Penny Harter, Hiroaki Sato, and Adele Kenny — serving as judges. Van den Heuvel was invited to
Japan for a press conference to announce the winners.
The Grand Prize winner was Bernard Lionel Einbond,
and about 200 runners-up were chosen from among
40,000 entries.
The
Nyogen Senzaki Memorial Haiku Prize was awarded
annually from 1964 through 1980 by the Poetry Society
of Texas. This contest, which is believed to be
the earliest American award for haiku, was named
for the great Soto Zen teacher in America, Nyogen
Senzaki, and was the creation of one of the sensei ’s students, Clement Hoyt. Robert Spiess won
the first contest. Later, from 1983 until 1992,
the Poetry Society of Texas sponsored the Katherine
Schutze Haiku Memorial Award.
The Haiku Society of America, too, has sponsored
a variety of contests for haiku and related forms.
First were the Merit Book Awards for outstanding
achievement in the field of haiku publication, which
were begun in 1974 (for books published in 1973–74),
continued in 1978, and held every other year from
1981 to 1987 and every year since 1988. Beginning
in 1976, the Society has conducted an annual haiku
contest, open to all poets, in memory of Harold
G. Henderson. The Gerald M. Brady Award for best
unpublished senryu was added to the roster in 1988
with a grant from haiku poet Virginia Brady Young
in memory of her brother. In earlier years winners
of the Henderson Award sometimes included linked
forms, and in 1990 a separate HSA award for renku
was created; this contest was named in memory of
Bernard Lionel Einbond in 1999. In 2005 the first
Mildred Kanterman Memorial Award for best first
book of haiku was awarded.
The
HSA appoints judges for the Nicholas A. Virgilio
Memorial Haiku Competition for High School Students,
which also began in 1990 and is sponsored by the
association dedicated to the memory of that American
haiku pioneer. Beginning in 1987 the journal Modern
Haiku sponsored a contest for haiku by high school
seniors, the annual Kay Titus Mormino Memorial Scholarship,
that awarded a top prize of $500. In later years
other prizes were added in memory of Ann Atwood,
Geraldine Clinton Little, Margaret Dunfield, and
Nunzio Crispi; all were discontinued by 2004. The
oldest continuing student contest is probably the
annual International Haiku Contest of the Hawai’i
Education Association, which was first held in 1979
and awards a great number of prizes in separate
flights for students and adults and season word,
humorous, and “Hawai’i word” sections.
Every few years the contest-winning haiku are gathered
together by Darold D. Braida and published in a
volume entitled Na Pua’oli puke’umi (“Joyous Blossoms”).
The
haiku journal Dragonfly sponsored a variety
of contests for subscribers, and two other periodicals,
Larry Gross’s The Top (Tournament of
Poetry) and David Priebe’s Haiku Headlines
feature an ongoing haiku competition or kukai in
which submitters vote on their favorite haiku in
the issue. Other journals, including Modern Haiku,
South by Southeast, and The Heron’s
Nest, designate and sometime reward “best
of issue” haiku or “editor’s choices.
A contest in memory of longtime editor Robert Spiess
was launched by Modern Haiku in 2003. In
1981 the Museum of Haiku Literature in Tokyo first
made available a grant of $100 a year to the HSA
to support a best-of-issue award in Frogpond as
well as the British Haiku Society organ, Blithe
Spirit. The amounts were raised to $200 a year
in 1994 and to $300 in 2000. Local haiku groups
often hold contests of one type or another. Two
of these that achieved national significance are
the Loke Hilikimani Contest, organized by the Rockland
County, N.Y., haiku group, which ran for five years,
1987–90 and 1992, and the popular San Francisco
International Haiku, Senryu, and Tanka Contest,
which was inaugurated in 1993 by the Haiku Poets
of Northern California. The Boston Haiku Society
holds the annual Kajo Aso Contest.
American
writers’ organizations and literary journals
sometimes welcome haiku in their poetry contests,
and occasionally feature separate haiku sec-tions
or even freestanding haiku contests. Notable among
these are the well established competition mounted
by the National League of American Pen Women—Palomar
Branch[31] and the Penumbra Poetry and Haiku Contest,
sponsored by the Tallahassee (Fla.) Writers’
Association.[32] Each year a great many thematic
“haiku” contests are held by American
newspapers, radio stations,
and civic organizations that perpetuate the notion
that a haiku is any sort of witty remark or social
comment written in lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables;
these need only dismissive mention here. One exception,
however, is the annual bumper-sticker contest held
by the Christian Science Monitor newspaper
beginning in 1997. With a general subject of automobiles
and traffic and judged by poets who know haiku,
the CSM contest has demonstrated that such a competition
can be fun and promote the (generally commercial)
goals of the sponsor, all while encouraging the
composition of good haiku.
Journals
In
the first section we saw how the early haiku journals—American
Haiku, Haiku, and the others — contributed
to the sense of community and accelerated the growth
of the American haiku movement. This has been no
less true in recent years. Even in the Internet
age, the haiku journals are where the “action” is and remain the mode of record and, hence, the
most important bellwether of the movement.
Two
journals have dominated American haiku, but the
haiku scene has also been enriched by a succession
of smaller, often ephemeral journals that have explored
various dimensions of the vital American haiku movement.
From its first publication, on the heels of the
closing of American Haiku, Modern Haiku has
held pride of place. Kay Titus Mormino produced
the first issue of Modern Haiku in the winter
of 1969–70. In its third year it changed from
four to three issues a year. Mormino named Robert
Spiess editor in 1978, and the journal’s base
was moved from Los Angeles to Madison, Wis. Over
the years, Modern Haiku provided a forum
for all views on the evolving aesthetics and craft
of English-language haiku, featured the finest essays,
consistently reviewed the haiku literature, introduced
hundreds of new poets, and kept a finger on the
pulse of haiku in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere.
Because of ill health, Spiess turned the editorship
of Modern Haiku over to Lee Gurga following
issue 33:1 (winter-spring 2002).
Frogpond,
the journal of the Haiku Society of America (and
first called HSA Frogpond, a name chosen
in a contest), made its appearance in February 1978.
The first issue listed in addition to Lilli Tanzer
as editor Yasko Karaki as consulting editor, and
Stephen Wolfe as correspondent in Japan. The editors
originally intended to publish all haiku submitted
by HSA subscriber/members, but this policy was almost
at once found to be infeasible, and the magazine
welcomed haiku, senryu, linked verse, essays, and
reviews by members and nonmembers alike. Frogpond
began as a quarterly and remained so, with a few
deviations, through the end of 1995, after which
time it went to three issues a year. The several
editors [33] have brought various interests and
skills to the journal, and over the years Frogpond has been in the vanguard of presenting linked forms
and haiku sequences, tanka, and haibun as well as
high-quality essays and reviews. An awareness of
the needs of the membership has always governed
the journal’s editorial choices. Frogpond’s
circulation is the largest of any English-language
haiku journal.
Haiku
Highlights and its successor journal, Dragonfly,
were another pillar of the haiku movement in its
salad days. With Jean Calkins as editor and publisher,
Haiku Highlights made its first appearance
in May 1965. It published material of highly variable
quality, first as a monthly but later as a quarterly.
Lorraine Ellis Harr, based in Portland, Ore., assumed
editorship in 1972 and soon renamed the magazine
Dragonfly. Harr wielded a strong editorial
hand, but many poets who cut their teeth on Dragonfly
thank her for her superb guidance in the subtleties
of the haiku genre. Dragonfly consistently
sought to bridge the Pacific, notably by featuring
articles on haiku aesthetics by a Japanese scholar,
Yagi Kometarô (subsequently gathered into
a useful compendium, Haiku: Messages from Matsuyama),
and, especially later in its run, translations from
Japanese by editor Richard Tice. Tice and Jack Lyon
became the editors in 1984, publishing irregularly
from Magna, Utah, until 1992.
Early
in 1977 the first issue appeared of Cicada,
a new Canadian haiku magazine edited and published
by Eric Amann. With triple emphasis — traditional
Japanese heritage, the middle ground of haiku in
the here and now, and far-out exploration and experimentation
— the excellently produced Cicada sparked
a resurgence of Canadian activity. The final issue
appeared in 1981, but the periodical was reborn
in Japan: New Cicada made its debut in 1984,
edited and published by Tadao Okazaki and with Amann
and Lilli Tanzer as consulting editors.
Two
notable journals began in the early 1980s on the
East Coast. Brussels Sprout was established
in 1980 in New Jersey by Alexis Rotella. In 1987
the journal was passed to Francine Porad in Washington
state. Porad continued to publish high quality haiku
and black-and-white artwork until 1995. Hal Roth’s Wind Chimes added a valuable dimension to
the haiku magazine world with a series of twenty-eight
issues published in Maryland from 1981 to 1989.
Other general-service haiku publications have included
Bonsai (Jan and Mary Streif, quarterly, 1976–78); Leanfrog (Louis Cuneo) 1979–82); The
Red Pagoda (Henry Lewis Sanders, quarterly from
1983); Old Pond (Tony Suraci, biannual, 1986–88); Black Bough (Chuck Easter and Kevin Walker,
irregular, 1991–99)[34]; and Persimmon (Mary and James Taylor, biannual, 1997–99).
Recent — and continuing — additions to
the roster include Dasoku, a letter-sized
biannual from the Kaji Aso Studio in Boston, begun
in 1997, and Bottle Rockets, a thriving project
of Stanford M. Forrester in Connecticut, which was
launched in 2000.
Amann’s
name is closely associated with Zen haiku, and his Cicada was the first journal to explore the
important relationship between haiku and Zen.
George Klacsanzky published a Zen-tinged haiku magazine,
Haiku Zasshi Zo, on the West Coast in the
1980s, while Season (Carolyn Thomas) edited Heron
Quarterly of Haiku and Zen Poetry, from 1997
to 1998, also on the West Coast.
Among
the several journals that were established as membership
publications, a few later assumed national importance.
Woodnotes, the quarterly newsletter inaugurated
by Vincent Tripi and Paul O. Williams at the time
of the creation of the Haiku Poets of Northern California
in 1989, evolved into a full-fledged journal, especially
when Michael Dylan Welch replaced Williams as co-editor
in 1991 and took over full editorial responsibilities
in 1993. Woodnotes and HPNC soon parted ways,
but the journal continued publishing independently
through autumn 1997. In 1999 HPNC began publishing
Mariposa, a slim, twice-yearly journal of
members’ haiku, edited by D. Claire Gallagher
and Ebba Story and later by Story alone.
Four
periodicals of primarily regional interest sprang
up in the early 1990s, and two are still in existence.
Seaoats was a twice-yearly publication of
the Haiku Poets of South Florida, begun and edited
by Robert Henry Poulin, that was active in the mid-1990s.
Nor’easter has been published twice
a year since 1992 by Larry Kimmel for the Northeast
Region of the Haiku Society of America. Northwest
Literary Forum was launched by Ce Rosenow in
Oregon in 1992 and lasted for seven or eight years.
South by Southeast was begun by Kenneth C.
Leibman upon his election as Southeast Region Coordinator
of the Haiku Society of America in 1994. From 1995,
under the editorship of Jim Kacian, SxSE became
more national in scope. It was taken over by the
Richmond Haiku Workshop in 1998.
Self-help
and teaching have always been important to the haiku
movement. In 1976 the Haiku Appreciation Club was
organized by Edna Purviance to share ideas and help,
especially with beginners. A newsletter provided
a forum and publication outlet, being superseded
in a couple of years by the magazine Portals.
Another southern California publication making appearance
at this time was David Priebe’s Haiku Headlines.
A Monthly Newsletter of Haiku and Senryu, in the
spring of 1988. Priebe has managed to keep publishing
a haiku monthly for an amazing seventeen years (as
of mid-2005), printing up to 100 original haiku
in each issue as well as managing the administration
of a continuous readers’ ballot on the best
of each issue.
Among
the highly selective journals — those that
are looking for “a few good haiku” — are High/Coo, a small quarterly inaugurated
by Randy and Shirley Brooks in Indiana in 1976 that
lasted until 1982. Four years later the Brookses
began publication of Mayfly, a minisized
haiku magazine that has showcased 14–16 carefully
selected verses, originally three times a year,
and more recently twice. Acorn is an amazing
success story, immediately catapulting into the
top rank of haiku journals. In 1998 editor A.C.
Missias recognized a need for a straightforward,
soundly produced haiku-only journal and proceeded
to fill that need very well. Three supplements to
Acorn containing theoretical work on seasons
in haiku (2000), tanka (2001), and linked forms
(2003) have also been published.
By
the same token, a few journals have been [self-]consciously
experimental in one way or another. Clarence Matsuo-Allard,
in Manchester, N.H., launched his Sun-Lotus Haiku
in the spring of 1976; Uguisu, devoted to
one-line haiku exclusively, in 1977; and Amoskeag/Big
Sky in the early 1980s — all were short-lived,
as was Joseph Earner’s earlier New World
Haiku, published in San Fernando, Calif. Begun
in 1992 and lasting until 2000, Point Judith
Light, edited by Patrick Frank, welcomed social-themed
haiku. Raw NerVZ Haiku, published since 1994
in Quebec by Dorothy Howard, is the enfant terrible
of the haiku publishing world, with a no-holds-barred
editorial policy regarding form and content, absence
of censorship (some would say editorial discretion),
and junkyard layouts and graphics. Another journal
on the cutting edge is ant ant ant ant ant,
which earlier was the epitome of a boutique publication
when each copy was handmade by editor Chris Gordon.
Recent issues have presented a dozen or more haiku
each from a limited number of poets.
A
few publications have been concerned with the relationship
of the haiku to mainstream poetry, especially the
short poem. Frederick A. Raborg, Jr., publisher
of the poetry magazine Amelia, expanded the
publication’s haiku supplement, Cicada,
into a separate quarterly in 1986 and issued it
from Bakersfield, Calif., until his death in 2001.
Phyllis Walsh inaugurated Hummingbird, a
handsomely produced chapbook-sized journal dedicated
to short poems, including haiku, in 1991. Michael
Dylan Welch’s quarterly Tundra was launched
in the summer of 1999. It was the first heavyweight
journal to confront — and aggressively so —
the question of the haiku’s relationship to
short poetry. A second number appeared in June 2001,
but publication apparently stopped with that issue.
Senryu,
renku, haiga, and haibun are often called “related
forms” of haiku, and an occasional journal
has concentrated on the phenomena of haiku in the
broader context. Seer Ox, edited and published
by Michael McClintock from 1972 to 1976 in Los Angeles,
brought out the wry humor, occasional vulgarity,
and sometime parody of senryu with a refreshingly
light touch. To date this has been the only journal
exclusively devoted to senryu, that kissing cousin
of haiku. Mirrors, published from spring
1988 by Jane Reichhold in Gualala, Calif., was a
subscriber-produced magazine with artwork and haiku
on each page designed by the author/artist. Mirrors
was taken over for a while by Nika (Jim Force) in
Calgary, Alta., but ceased publication in 1995.
Chiyo’s Corner, a celebration of four-color
graphics, multilingual poetry, and a variety of
verse forms, began in August 1999 under the editorship
of Kathleen Decker but was discontinued in 2001.
In
1985 Tundra Wind (Jim Wilson), an exponent of amateur
publishing associations (APA) started APA-Renga.
This was taken over by Terri Lee Grell (T.L. Kelly)
in 1989, expanded to include other materials, and
renamed Lynx. It was passed on to Jane and
Werner Reichhold in mid-1993. They added tanka,
subtracted haiku and fiction, and put up a Web version
beginning in 1995, then discontinued the ink-and-paper
version a few years later. HWUP! of Larry
Gross, which began in 1991, also featured participatory
renga among advice on the writing of various kinds
of poetry. Chameleon was originally conceived
by Zane Parks as an annual print magazine devoted
to renga that was to launch in 1998, but by early
2002 only the Web site seemed to be active.[35]
Henry Lewis Sanders tried to launch a rengay newsletter
in 1998. Journeys, the first periodical devoted
exclusively to haibun, appeared in 2002.
The
Emerging Canon: Haiku Anthologies
An
indication that American haiku had come of age and
was beginning to develop its own canon came with
the publication of the first comprehensive haiku
anthology in 1974. The Haiku Anthology, published
in a paperback edition by Doubleday Anchor, brought
together under Cor van den Heuvel’s careful
editing about 230 haiku by 38 well-known American
and Canadian poets. The introduction by van den
Heuvel limning something of the early history of
Western haiku, the biographical sketches, and materials
from the Haiku Society of America toward a definition
of haiku added immeasurably to the worth of the
book. Publication of the anthology was also the
first recognition of original, Western haiku by
a major commercial publisher. In 1986 a revised
and much enlarged edition of The Haiku Anthology,
again edited by van den Heuvel but published in
a trade edition by Simon & Schuster, continued
to set a standard for Western haiku and furthered
an awareness of haiku beyond the boundaries of the
relatively small haiku community. The second edition
contained nearly 700 haiku and senryu by 66 poets
and included valuable examples of linked forms and
haibun as well as biographical and bibliographical
notes. This edition of The Haiku Anthology was indexed by authors’ names and first lines
in The Columbia Granger’s Index to Poetry
in Anthologies. The third edition of The
Haiku Anthology appeared in 1999, published
this time by W.W. Norton, initially in a clothbound
edition. The contents had grown to include about
850 haiku and senryu by 89 poets. The introductory
essays to the first two editions were included,
as was a new foreword. In its three editions spanning
twenty-five years, The Haiku Anthology cemented
its position as the Blue Book of American haiku.
A
second important anthology appeared in 1993: Bruce
Ross’s Haiku Moment: An Anthology of North
American Haiku. Ross included an essay on Northern
American haiku as an introduction to the 825 haiku
by 186 poets. Somewhat less selective than van den
Heuvel in his criteria for inclusion, Ross’s
geographical view was broader than van den Heuvel’s
second edition, and he introduced to his anthology
a number of important haiku poets representing what
he called the “fourth generation” — those Americans who began publishing in the late
1980s.
In
1996 Jim Kacian and his Red Moon Press brought out
the first of the annual Red Moon Anthologies. Aiming
at a systematic approach to compilation, Kacian
and his staff of nine to eleven editors scanned
the year’s English-language haiku periodicals,
books, contests, and a few Web sites. The result
has been a pleasing series of volumes of very good
haiku, senryu, haibun, linked forms, and essays
that very nearly represents a chronicle of the year
in haiku. Red Moon Press has also published anthologies
of haibun and haiga and three volumes in a series
called A New Resonance: Emerging Voices in English-Language
Haiku.
A
number of American regional anthologies have been
published, typically the project of a local haiku
group. The best of these are the Midwest Haiku
Anthology (1992), assembled and edited by Randy
M. Brooks and Lee Gurga, The San Francisco Haiku
Anthology (1992), edited by Jerry Ball, Garry
Gay, and Tom Tico (1992); Third Coast Haiku Anthology
(1978), edited in Milwaukee, Wis., by Jeffrey Winke
and Charles Rossiter; Bridge Traffic: Haiku and
Related Poetry by People of the Massachusetts Pioneer
Valley (1998), edited by John Sheirer; and Pocket
Change (2000), from the Towpath Haiku Society
edited by Ellen Compton and others. Local haiku
groups such as the Haiku Poets of Northern California,
the Northwest Region of the Haiku Society of America,
and the Boston Haiku Society also publish periodic
anthologies that showcase the recent work of their
members. Surprisingly, only a handful of topical
haiku anthologies have been compiled. In this vein,
Alexis Rotella brought together a sampling of butterfly
haiku in 1981, Rod Willmot in Canada put together
an erotic anthology in 1983 and Hiroaki Sato compiled
a bilingual Japanese-English anthology of erotic
haiku in 2004, and Leroy Kanterman honored the scarecrow
in 1999.
Gaining
an Understanding of Japanese Haiku
The
American haiku movement has been fortunate to have
a variety of translations — ranging widely
in style and fidelity—of classical haiku from
Japanese to serve as a point of reference. We have
already mentioned The Anthology of Japanese Literature compiled and edited by Donald Keene in 1955, the
retranslations of Beilensen and Behn in the 1950s
and ’60s, and the works of Cid Corman. In addition,
the Australian Buddhist poet Harold Stewart produced
two books of translations of the Japanese masters — A Net of Fireflies (1960) and A Chime
of Windbells (1969) that, because they rendered
the haiku into rhymed couplets and provided titles
absent in the originals, were not much valued by
mainstream American haiku poets. Still, they proved
quite popular with the general public. Essays included
in Stewart’s two books deal with spiritual
aspects of haiku. Twenty-Five Pieces of Now was a mini-book of 25 Japanese haiku translated
by Hian (William J. Higginson). In the early 1970s,
the brevity and bite of these translations were
a welcome contrast to the wordy and often sentimental
translations that abounded at the time. In 1973
Higginson’s Thistle Brilliant Morning introduced the unfamiliar twentieth-century Japanese
poets Hekigodô, Santôka, and Hôsai.
Books
by Hiroaki Sato that included From the Country
of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry,
edited and translated with Burton Watson (1981),
and One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to
English (1983), as well as Earl Miner’s Japanese Linked Poetry: An Account with Translations
of Renga and Haikai Sequences (1979) and The
Monkey’s Straw Raincoat and Other Poetry of
the Bashô School, introduced and translated
by Miner and Hiroko Odagiri (1981) were substantial
contributions to the literature. Sato’s Eigo
haiku: aru shikei no hirogari (1997; “Haiku
in English: A Poetic Form Expands”), presented
the development and current situation of English-language
haiku to Japanese readers.
Noted
Midwestern poet and Zen poetry specialist Lucien
Stryk produced books of translations of haiku and
other Japanese verse beginning in 1965. Stryk’s
approach has appealed to many American haiku poets
because of his laconism — a style that catches
the conciseness of the Japanese originals and emphasizes
the Zen content of the haiku. Of special interest
in this connection are Stryk’s works The
Penguin Book of Zen Poetry (1981), On Love
and Barley: Haiku of Bashô (1985), The
Dumpling Field: Haiku of Issa (1991), and Cage
of Fireflies: Modern Japanese Haiku (1993).
Stephen
Addiss (with Fumiko and Akira Yamamoto) issued three
charming books of translations — A Haiku
Menagerie (1992), A Haiku Garden (1996),
and Haiku People (1998) that include the
Japanese original verses as well as marvelous sumi-e
illustrations of his own. Just at the time he was
named poet laureate of the United States, Robert
Hass came out with a book in the Ecco Press’s
The Essential Poets series, The Essential Haiku:
Versions of Bashô, Buson, and Issa, so
it is probable that haiku registered a small blip
on America’s literary radar in 1994. The book
contains prose works and haibun by the three Japanese
masters, as well as essays and explanations by Hass.
Another prominent West Coast poet, Sam Hamill, published
his collection of Issa’s haiku, The Spring
of My Life, in 1997, The Essential Bashô
in 1999, and collections of multiple Japanese masters,
The Little Book of Haiku (1995) and The
Sound of Water (2000). Two other works that
should not be overlooked are Lenore Mayhew’s Monkey’s Raincoat (1985) and Modern
Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature
by Makoto Ueda (1983), especially for its chapters
on modern poets Shiki and Seisensui.
Western
Haiku Scholarship
In
1971 William J. Higginson’s essays on haiku
and senryu in English were collected in Itadakimasu,
having appeared first in Haiku Highlights.
Higginson’s classic The Haiku Handbook:
How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku (1985),
compiled with the aid of Penny Harter, made accessible
for the first time in English a concise, eminently
readable compendium of haiku history, modern developments,
and information on both writing and teaching haiku
and related forms. Now twenty years old, it is still
essential reading for the American haiku poet. Higginson’s
twin volumes, The Haiku Seasons and Haiku
World, published in 1995–96, explored the
historical background of the Japanese saijiki and
laid the foundations for “An International
Poetry Almanac” —the subtitle of the latter
volume. In Haiku World Higginson presented
hundreds of season words (kigo) and, using more
than 1,000 haiku as examples, demonstrated how these
concepts are employed by poets around the globe
(187). For the first time English-speaking haiku
poets had adequate tools for studying the Japanese
kigo system and could debate the adequacy of these
conventions for non-Japanese haiku.[36] Adding to
the body of methodological works, Clark Strand published
his Seeds from a Birch Tree, in 1997. Intended
as a “how-to” book, it divided the haiku
community, a segment of which was attracted to the
spirituality and straightforward methods Strand
taught while others criticized his dedication to
5–7–5 haiku and saw a lack of discrimination
in the haiku selected for inclusion. Four other
instructional books appeared in rapid succession
in the first years of the new century: David Coomler’s Hokku—Writing Traditional Haiku in English (2001), Bruce Ross’s How To Haiku (2002),
Jane Reichhold’s Writing and Enjoying Haiku (2002), and Lee Gurga’s Haiku: A Poet’s
Guide (2003).
An
extremely influential long article was Eric Amann’s
long essay The Wordless Poem, which appeared
as a special issue of Haiku Magazine in 1969.
Drawing on Zen to show the cultural background of
Japanese haiku, Amann illumined more clearly here
than anywhere else in the published literature the
very essence of haiku, that indispensable center
without which there is no haiku. He drew on both
classical Japanese and 20th-century Western haiku
to contrast haiku with the tradition of Western
poetry. Amann’s views were substantially challenged
only in the late 1990’s with the publication
of Haruo Shirane’s book (see below). Cor van
den Heuvel’s article on the English-language
haiku movement, “Concision, Perception, Awareness
— Haiku,” which appeared on the front
page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review
(March 29, 1987), brought the humble haiku to the
attention of a nationwide audience, and was the
first detailed notice to appear in such an important
main-stream periodical.
The
first critical study in English of the life and
writings of Bashô appeared only in 1970. Makoto
Ueda’s Matsuo Bashô: The Master Haiku
Poet filled a vital need for Western writers
not only in its full account of Bashô’s
life but more especially in critical discussions
of his writings and his techniques. The same author’s Bashô and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku
with Commentary (1992) represented another giant
step in haiku scholarship, translating 255 of the
master’s haiku and including critical commentary
by Japanese scholars through the years. Steven D.
Carter included haiku and senryu as well as other
genres in his 1991 anthology, Traditional Japanese
Poetry, which won applause for the fidelity
of its translations. Toshiharu Oseko, an independent
researcher in Japan, published the first volume
of his remarkable compendium Basho’s Haiku:
Literal Translations for Those Who Wish To Read
the Original Japanese Text, with Gram-matical Analysis
and Explanatory Notes in 1990. This contains
330 of Bashô’s haiku in Japanese, rômaji,
and word-by-word translation with abundant critical
and historical notes. A second volume, containing
Bashô’s remaining 650 known haiku, appeared
in 1996. Haruo Shirane, a professor of Japanese
litera-ture at Columbia University, contributed
what is perhaps the deepest and most thorough examination
of Bashô and his relationship to Japanese
culture and lit-erature in his 1998 monograph, Traces
of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry
of Bashô. Shirane’s book was also
the most forceful statement to date that Bashô was far less influenced by Zen than had generally
been believed by American haikuists. Bashô’s
Haiku, a new book of translations with copious
annotations, was published by scholar David Landis
Barnhill in 2004.
The
first book in English to focus on the life and the
writing of Yosa Buson, Haiku Master Buson (1978), was a collaboration between a Japanese and
an American scholar, Yûki Sawa and Edith Shiffert.
Ueda weighed in with his The Path of Flowering
Thorn: The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson in
1998. A third study entitled “Reluctant Genius:
The Life and Work of Buson, a Japanese Master of
Haiku and Painting,” and written by Leon Zolbrod,
professor of Asian Studies at the University of
British Columbia, was abridged and serialized in Modern Haiku from 1992 to 2002. Chiyo-ni:
Woman Haiku Master, a book about the life and
works of Japan’s foremost woman haiku poet,
by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi contains
some of the most exquisite renderings of haiku into
English yet accomplished. No book-length study of
Kobayashi Issa existed in English until 2004, when
suddenly we were graced with two. Ueda completed
his tour of the three main pillars of Japanese classical
haiku with Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry
of Kobayashi Issa, and Issa specialist David
Lanoue offered his Pure Land Haiku: The Art of
Priest Issa. After Bashô, Issa is the
most published haiku poet in English, and the several
major collections of translations all contain useful
essays on his sad, eventful life and his contributions
to haiku.[37]
Shiki,
the great reformer and revivifier of Japanese haiku,
is the subject of an excellent study by Janine Beichman,
Masaoka Shiki, and a sampling of Shiki’s
haiku and tanka was collected and translated by
Burton Watson. Harold J. Isaacson’s highly
idiosyncratic collection, Peonies Kana: Haiku
by the Upasaka Shiki, contains so many distractions
in the form of asterisks and Japanese words imbedded
in the haiku that the pleasure of reading the poetry
is compromised. The finest survey in English of
the development of modern haiku in Japan is found
in the Poetry section of Donald Keene’s 1984
two-volume survey of modern Japanese literature, Dawn to the West. About modern and contemporary
Japanese haikuists overall, however, there has been
a dearth of biographical and analytical works in
English, although a recently in the West a number
of book-length collections of works by these poets
have appeared.[38]
Bibliographic
work on haiku in English has been scarce, and almost
nothing has been done in the past fifteen years.
Gary Brower’s Haiku in Western Languages:
An Annotated Bibliography, published in 1972,
offered much, especially for the very early years
of Western haiku and material on Japanese haiku.
Randy and Shirley Brooks brought out four editions
of Haiku Review (’80, ’82, ’84,
’87), a directory of haiku books and articles
in print that also included overview essays of new
publications.
The
establishment of the American Haiku Archive at the
California State Library in Sacramento provided
for the first time a focal point and central repository
for the American haiku movement. The inauguration
of the archive was celebrated in ceremonies on July
12, 1996. It is dedicated to the collection, preservation,
and promotion of all haiku and related poetry as
a vital component of literature in the English language.
A prominent American haiku poet has been selected
each year as honorary curator.[39]
In
just over 100 years, haiku, a Japanese genre perched
somewhere between poetry and spirituality, synthetic
but enormously popular on its home ground, has been
discovered by the West, translated, imitated, and — dare we say it? — mastered and integrated
into Western culture. Early students of Japanese
haiku, notably Blyth and Henderson, fretted over
whether haiku could be transplanted in foreign soil.
Early practitioners such as Yasuda and Hackett ably
demonstrated that it could be done. Along the way
the haiku was enormously influential to other writers.
Haiku’s succinctness, objectiveness, concreteness,
and minimalist approach to poetics were a tonic
to poets as diverse as the Imagists, the Beats,
and Native Americans. The spiritual depth of haiku
continues to challenge scholars even while the simplicity
and directness of these short verses made the genre
immediately popular among a broad segment of the
American public. This popular aspect has, in turn,
led to a flowering of English-language haiku worldwide,
the subject of a future installment of this long
essay.
End
Notes
[1]
Much of the material in this paper is a reworking
and updating of the authoritative study, “A
History of Western Haiku,” written by Elizabeth
Searle Lamb, first published in four parts in Cicada in 1979–80, and subsequently appearing as introductory
chapters to two sections in the omnibus collection, A Haiku Path: The Haiku Society of America, 1968–1988.
Entire blocks of text are unchanged, and a large
percentage of the first two sections is her work.
Elizabeth reviewed an early version of this manuscript
and made suggestions for its improvement. She declined
to be named as a coauthor, but I am very much in
her debt for allowing her materials to be altered
and reused in this way. To this great lady of American
haiku, who died in February 2005, this work is humbly
dedicated.
[2]
The analysis of Noguchi’s work was later published
in Gurga, “Ezra Pound.”
[3]
The contribution of these writers to American receptivity
to haiku is the theme of Thomas Lynch’s unpublished
doctoral dissertation, “An Original Relation
to the Universe: Emersonian Poetics of Immanence
and Contemporary American Haiku.” In the 1990s
Tadashi Kondô was working on a concordance
of nature allusions in Thoreau and the Japanese
system of season references and read a preliminary
draft of a paper on the subject at the inaugural
meeting of the Haiku Society of America South Region,
Hot Springs, Ark., Nov. 7, 1998.
[4]
Swede, “History” 108–34.
[5]
In 1959 or 1960 an LP record simply called Haiku
was made from a lecture Watts gave over station
KPFA-FM in Berkeley, Calif., and included, on the
second side, haiku read by Watts in English and
Sumire Jacobs in Japanese and with accompaniment
of traditional Japanese instruments. A CD version
of this recording was available in 2004. Watts also
discussed haiku as related to Zen in his 1957 book,
The Way of Zen.
[6]
See also the Introduction to Jerry Ball, et al.,
editors. The San Francisco Haiku Anthology,
5. Cor van den Heuvel makes the same point in The
Haiku Anthology, 1974, xxix, note 5.
[7]
Knight’s are surely the most anthologized of
all English-language haiku. They appear in, among
others, Randall, Black Poets; Ellmann and
O’Clair, Modern Poems: An Introduction to
