11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Haiku finds American form - Beat!, August 24, 2003
This review is from: Book of Haikus (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)
The other Beat poets generally looked to him as a master, but Jack Kerouac's general reputation will probably always be that of a novelist, albeit a mad one who did little prosaic and much prosodic. Even though he created significant swaths of poetry - within his famous prose and elsewhere, it is a small circle that considers him a poet.
Anyone in that group would like this book.
It shows how far his poems would roam yet stay with a form, the haiku form. This is known to readers of Scattered Poems and Poems All Sizes, and buffs familiar with his recordings with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims - but a better view of the amount of haiku Kerouac had within him is at hand.
A new collectipon of about 700 haikus now appears. Book of Haikus, includes works from several stages in Kerouac's career, and stands well with his other books of poems.
His approach to haiku form, like his approach to blues form, was creative. His first big step was to throw out the syllabic conventions. The classic syllable count of the Japanese form, he reasoned, worked for haiku poems in the Japanese language, but not for English maybe.
For Kerouac, description was key. Encounter with object or experience was key. It is here in Book of Haikus. In haiku bulk.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Finding Haiku, May 24, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Book of Haikus (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)
Jack Kerouac is truly an American icon. His writing has become legendary- and I think for good reason. His style of writing brought about a revolution in the way to construct a novel and his unique insight into his characters gave us, the reader, a new way of understanding both them, and ourselves. However, as far as a Haiku poet, his greatest gift was one of exploration. This book is less a book of great Haiku, and more of an experiment in Haiku. Most of his poems fall dreadfully short of what a real Haiku poem can do. I highly recommend "Take a Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace" by Sylvia Forges-Ryan to those who are really interested in understanding the deep and fragile art of Haiku. The poetry of Sylvia Forges-Ryan rings true both to the traditions of the form and often, to the depths of our souls.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must have, August 22, 2003
This review is from: Book of Haikus (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)
A great little book with a collection of haikus. Visual presentation is not the very best, but to me it is the contents that counts. IMHO there hardly is a better way to reflect the feelings of a moment than in a haiku, so one can get an intimate impression about the authors feelings comparable to a collection of snapshots. This haiku book certainly is a must have for every Jack Kerouac fan.
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