Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393239470 ISBN 13: 9780393239478

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Synopsis

An anthology of haiku in English, from Ezra Pound’s early experiments to the present-day masters. 

Haiku in English is an anthology of more than 800 brilliantly chosen poems that were originally written in English by over 200 poets from around the world. Although haiku originated as a Japanese art form, it has found a welcome home in the English-speaking world. This collection tells the story for the first time of Anglophone haiku, charting its evolution over the last one hundred years and placing it within its historical and literary context. It features an engaging introduction by former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins and an insightful historical overview by leading haiku poet, editor, and publisher Jim Kacian.

The selections range from the first fully realized haiku in English, Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” to plentiful examples by haiku virtuosos such as John Wills, Marlene Mountain, Nick Virgilio, and Raymond Roseliep, and to investigations into the genre by eminent poets like John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, and Seamus Heaney. The editors explore the genre’s changing forms and themes, highlighting its vitality and its breadth of poetic styles and content. Among the many poems on offer are organic form experiments by E. E. Cummings and Michael McClure, evocations of black culture by Richard Wright and Sonia Sanchez, and the seminal efforts of Jack Kerouac.

The first anthology to map the full range of haiku in the English tradition, Haiku in English is the perfect collection of this spare and elegant genre.

About this title

About the Authors

Jim Kacian is the founder of the Haiku Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to archiving and promoting haiku in English, and of Red Moon Press, the largest non-Japanese publisher of haiku-related books. He lives in Winchester, Virginia.

Philip Rowland teaches literature at Tamagawa University in Tokyo, where he lives, and is founder and editor of NOON: Journal of the Short Poem.

Allan Burns is a professional editor who compiled the haiku anthology Montage: The Book. He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate of the United States and the State of New York. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College and a Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute. A Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and author of many collections of poetry, including Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds and Horoscopes for the Dead, he lives in Westchester, New York.

Reviews

*Starred Review* The English-language haiku was launched 100 years ago when Poetry magazine published Ezra Pound’s catalytic “In a Station of the Metro”: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.” Pound’s is the first of the more than 800 haiku gathered in this stirring and defining anthology constructed by haiku experts Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns. In his enlivening and informative introduction, poet Billy Collins avers that what is essential to haiku is not the precise number of syllables—traditionally 17 syllables are arranged 5-7-5—but rather the “epiphanic jolt, the ‘A ha!’ moment.” And, indeed, many poets dispense with syllable count and line configuration altogether. Collins notes, too, that the “tiny genre” was popularized “just in time for the Beats to adopt it and give it a special American twist.” Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Snyder do appear here, along with Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, Sonia Sanchez, and many poets who will be new to readers. Kacian concludes with an invaluable overview of the evolution of an enduring form that is freshly enticing and breathtaking in this time of small screens and pop-up messages. David Russo writes, “Sun in the bones / of a darting minnow / my cell phone rings.” --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393239470
• ISBN 13: 9780393239478
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Kacian Jim, Rowland Philip, Burns Allan