lighting a blue-green touchpaper Cambrian explosion-- David J. Kelly
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Juxtapositions: A Journal of Haiku Research and Scholarship. We hope you are as excited as we are to see the launch of this important scholarly outlet for haiku research. Such a journal comes at an opportune time in the evolution of haiku from a literary niche in the West…
Read MoreABSTRACT: Applying psychoanalytic theory to haiku, this article explores how haiku might be seen as an attempt to return to the preverbal state of oneness with the world in what Jacques Lacan called the Imaginary Order — doing so with the mechanism of language, which Lacan says begins our entry into the Symbolic Order, where we begin…
Read MoreABSTRACT: Tomas Tranströmer’s earliest forays into haiku appear in his nine-poem sequence from 1959, Fangelse (Prison). In these brief poems, Tranströmer observes the inmates of the Hällby Youth Custody Center, writing about daily life in the reformation facility. At the same time, Tranströmer uses these intimate glimpses into the quotidian aspects of incarceration to level…
Read MoreABSTRACT: James W. Hackett catapulted to international fame in 1964 when he took top honors in the first Japan Air Lines haiku competition. Taken under the wing of R. H. Blyth, he shared the conviction that Zen and haiku are inseparable. A collection of Hackett’s haiku was included in Blyth’s History of Haiku, and a…
Read MoreABSTRACT: In 1940s Japan, haiku poets were persecuted, arrested, tortured and their journals annihilated by the ultranationalist Tennō regime. All victims were advocates of free-verse haiku poetry, which had turned away from the “traditional” stylism of haiku composition. After the war, Takahama Kyoshi (1874 – 1959) became chief editor of the haiku journal Hototogisu, and propagated a…
Read MoreABSTRACT: Haiku has migrated from the country of its origin, and to languages and cultures that seemingly share nothing with Japan, yet the genre is thriving. The most energetic and thriving haiku culture resides in North America. Haruo Shirane, an authority on classical Japanese literature and a provocative writer on the legacy of haiku in…
Read MoreABSTRACT: Bashō’s aesthetic focus over the last fifteen years of his life may be reduced to two fundamental elements, sabi and karumi. The custom is to give sabi the predominant position. However, a complete understanding of his life and work will not be complete unless and until karumi is given proper status. Sabi represents the…
Read MoreABSTRACT: Everyone knows what haiku look like: three lines of five, seven and five syllables. And so they are — except when they’re not. In fact, haiku in English (more than any other language) has expressed itself in a wide variety of forms, ranging from one to four lines, myriad syllable counts, and a plethora of typographical…
Read MoreJuxtapositions, the first journal dedicated to English-language haiku research and scholarship, seeks to review not only significant individual collections, but the collected critical and scholarly work of important figures in the history of the genre. In this issue Michael Dylan Welch considers the contribution made by scholar and poet William J. Higginson, and Jerry W….
Read MoreA Scholar’s Library of Haiku in English is a selected bibliography of books in English generated by the collective efforts of the Juxtapositions staff intended to promote the development of scholarship on haiku. Over the last fifty years there has been a tremendous growth in the variety and number of poets embracing haiku as their…
Read MoreJuxtapositions, the first journal dedicated to English-language haiku research and scholarship, has come into being largely because of the efforts of this group of dedicated haiku poets, scholars and educators, each contributing not only their personal expertise, but additional effort and insight into the process, to help fill a void that had existed within the…
Read MoreJuxtapositions, the first journal dedicated to English-language haiku research and scholarship, is a collaborative effort of scholars, poets and artists from around the world, offering original scholarship, a culling of the best of what has been published in the past, review of current and historically important books, and a consideration of contemporary practices in haiku…
Read MoreHaiga is the Japanese term for a combination of haiku poems and visual images — hai comes from haiku, and ga is the Japanese word for painting (as in Zenga etc.). All the great Japanese haiku masters, including Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Shiki, occasionally added paintings to their poems, almost always in a simplified style that did…
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