Haiku and Modernist Poetics

Yoshinobu Hakutani

Palgrave Macmillan, Aug 15, 2009 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 195 pages

This book examines the genesis and development of haiku in Japan and traces its impact on modernist poetics. This study shows that the most pervasive East-West artistic, cultural, and literary exchange that has taken place in modern and postmodern times was in the reading and writing of haiku in the West. Hakutani roots Y.B Yeats’ symbolism in cross cultural visions; reveals Ezra Pound’s imagism to have originated in haiku; and discusses some of the finest haiku written by Jack Kerouac, Richard Wright, Sonia Sanchez, and James Emanuel.

About the author

Yoshinobu Hakutani is Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at Kent State University. He is the author or editor of many books, including Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Modernism: From Spatial Narrative to Jazz Haiku; Richard Wright and Racial Discourse; Wright’s Haiku: This Other World; and Theodore Dreiser’s Art, Music, and Literature, 1897-1902.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Haiku and Modernist Poetics
• Author: Yoshinobu Hakutani
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
• ISBN: 0230616550, 9780230616554
• Length: 195 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative; Language Arts & Disciplines / Writing / General; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / General