Juxtapositions
Some time in late 2010, the Haiku Foundation will present the first issue of Juxtapositions: the Journal of haiku poetics and culture (JUXTA). The editorial starting point at JUXTA is that the phenomenon of contemporary haiku worldwide has reached a critical mass and that questions raised by this shortest of literary forms deserve close and sustained attention. For a while now, critics within the haiku community have argued that haiku poetics and poems should be considered worthy of academic research. JUXTA intends to push that agenda while determining its validity.
The senior editor, Tom D’Evelyn, welcomes inquiries about JUXTA. He can be reached at juxta_AT_thehaikufoundation_DOT_org (replace _AT_ and _DOT_ with the appropriate symbols).
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What’s in a name? In this case, Juxtapositions refers not only to the canonical definition of haiku—which itself is open to debate—but to the comparative method of research. JUXTA will publish essays in a variety of disciplines, ranging from cultural history, to linguistics, poetics, ecology, theory of nature, human landscape and travel, literary history, and reception (for example, the reception of haiku in Barthes and Bonnefoy), and contemporary criticism.
Although Juxtapositions is an English language publication, we will not limit the range of subject matter to the Anglophone world: far from it. Haiku is an international phenomenon.
The agenda includes discussions situating haiku within non-haiku poetries: Stevens’s tercets, Auden’s juxtapositions, Bishop’s particulars, Colum McCann’s moments (no reason to limit inquiry just to poetry), and so on.
JUXTA is designed not to establish a set of canonical truths but to sponsor articulate and responsible debate and ultimately nourish the haiku arts themselves. Literary tradition is not disposable. JUXTA respects the distinction between tradition and traditionalism made by Jaroslav Pelikan: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”
The planning process behind JUXTA has been a long and somewhat bumpy one. Members of the Haiku Foundation will remember reading earlier announcements and the current plans include the good work that has gone before. We are happy to announce the formation of a board of Contributing Editors; while a work in progress, the current board includes prominent academics and writers who have published works influential in the academy. The breadth and distinction of achievement embodied by this group of editors, a group bound to expand as JUXTA matures, promises that JUXTA will make a significant and influential contribution to literary and cultural studies.
The senior editor of JUXTA is Tom D’Evelyn. After earning a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, D’Evelyn held positions in journalism and editing, ran his own literary agency, and helped found Single Island Press in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he is currently managing editor.
