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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
On Haiku

On Haiku

Paperback

Letters & EssaysGeneral Poetry

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0811227413
ISBN13: 9780811227414
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: Oct 30 2018
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.80
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.10 Depth: 7.90
Language: English

Who doesn't love haiku? It is not only America's most popular cultural import from Japan but also our most popular poetic form: instantly recognizable, more mobile than a sonnet, loved for its simplicity and compression, as well as its ease of composition. Haiku is an ancient literary form seemingly made for the Twittersphere--Jack Kerouac and Langston Hughes wrote them, Ezra Pound and the Imagists were inspired by them, Hallmark's made millions off them, first-grade students across the country still learn to write them. But what really is a haiku? Where does the form originate? Who were the original Japanese poets who wrote them? And how has their work been translated into English over the years? The haiku form comes down to us today as a cliché a three-line poem of 5-7-5 syllables. And yet its story is actually much more colorful and multifaceted. And of course to write a good one can be as difficult as writing a Homeric epic--or it can materialize in an instant of epic inspiration.

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General Poetry