Customer Reviews

Book of Haikus (Poets, Penguin)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I'm giving this book three stars, though Kerouac rightly deserves 5, and Regina Weinreich just as many for her wonderful introduction and efforts to gather nearly all of JK's known Haiku-based poems. My low rating is for the book's design, presentation, and production--not insignificant matters for our eventual interest and overall impression of a work of writing. Design is not separate from our enjoyment of the work, and here we see how design can sabotage the wonderful and various occasions condensed into Kerouac's "short and sweet sudden jump[s] of thought." As a reader I am shocked when I turn from a beautiful grouping of words like "Blowing in an afternoon wind, /on a white fence,/ A cobweb," close the book in order to look out the window at the world just described, and then look down to see: A Clown, a scrawled caricature of a man, and one dashed off in all haste and without any insight into the character of the writer; the funny little beatnik letters, and disgustingly wallpaperish patterns on the back cover. Everything about the book cover screams for me to run away. Not to mention that every copy in the bookstore was manufactured badly--so that the printing on every page slants, as if falling into the binding. The cover portrait is a terrible way of pandering to image recognition rather than the quiet lyric intensity of the poems. Penguin's design office should be ashamed for reintroducing stereotypes which distance us from this generation of great artists and writers, writers who helped to wake up America from its general somnolence. Kerouac's memory, and American Poetry deserve a better face than this.

I wanted to say that I disagree with the comment about the poor production values of this book. Even though the paper could certainly have been of higher quality, the book itself is beautifully designed and printed. I fell in love with it, and already gave a copy to a friend who loves Beat poetry but doesn't know much about Kerouac's verse.

I bought this book as a gift for a friend--he absolutely loved it. My friend likes books by Jack Kerouac. After reading this one--he put it at the top of his list. I myself have not read it yet--but I plan on doing so when I can pry it away from my friend. I am reporting about his experiences with it.

The haiku poem is a Japanese genre where each poem consists of 17 syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern. Kerouac uses this short form in his own personal way - he also calls these short poems "American Pops". These haikus are simple and often funny and they deal with existential matters, nature and Buddhism (often in a blend). Kerouac at his best. A jazz & poetry reading of some of these poems is included on the CD box-set entitled "The Jack Kerouac Collection".

Who am I to judge another human being's writings objectively? Who am I to declare definitively that what one calls a haiku is in actuality not a haiku at all?

Am I the expert? I don't think I am an expert because I am still learning about the artform -- but perhaps I 'do' have a degree of objectivity about it?

The reason I think I may have some degree of objectivity about it is simply because I have been reading haiku; studying and investigating haiku (especially the original early great Japanese masters); and creating with great flexibility of experimentation my own haiku pretty obsessively for a few years now. I don't think it can be argued that there must be some kind of a genuine "aha" moment (a hidden insight) within the tiny poem; or that there must be at least one "not necessarily quite so obvious on the surface" intuited connection demonstrated existing between the animate and inanimate things in nature. It is in the absence of these things that one runs the risk of ending up with a tiny bit of reporting of what one perceived with his or her five senses and nothing more than that.

Again, I don't know just how much objective discernment I have developed for making determinations of other people's good and bad haiku -- however, I can't imagine that it can be argued that at the very least a so called haiku that possesses an intuited set of connections or relationships between things found in nature will indeed seemingly qualify it as being a "true" and valid haiku.

I believe that we here in the west (even after all this time) are yet to grasp what the true essence of the haiku artform actually is. So many of us here in the western world have not yet gotten beyond composing what are nothing more than these little filler material moments that are mostly just empty reporting of what one sees or hears. Much of the so-called haiku that so many of us create are so "gimmicky" (so "clever" or "contrived") and full of "affectation".

I think that most of Kerouac's so called haiku quite simply are not haiku at all, but are seemingly just reporting what he saw and heard at any given moment; they're images without substance. I am overwhelmed by the sense that he never practiced looking below the surface of these images he reported to see if there was any extra depth therein.

Now, having pretty much condemned most of Mr. Kerouac's tiny creations as being invalid (and I feel bad in my gut having done so) let me just try to prove my point by listing examples.

These are seemingly objectively good to brilliant:

In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
has died of old age

(It is brilliant; it has substance and the image is rendered perfectly.)

Chief Crazy Horse
looks tearfully north
The first snow flurries

(This is very good; the image is direct and has a substance to it. You notice that there are some almost "inexpressible" connections existing between the elements of the Chief's tears (regret over something, perhaps -- or a ruefulness?) and the snow flurries (Indicating perhaps a feeling that "it's getting late now" or even that "it is already too late"). There could also be a connection to notice contrasting his presumed "warrior's strength" with his tears. This one is very rich in the things that make for a objectively good or great haiku or senryu.)

Missing a kick
at the icebox door
it closed anyway

(This is a good one and seemingly is closer to being a "senryu" than a haiku. Do you see that it has that little "aha" moment in the last line? The setup is in the first line and the payoff is in the last.)

For me those three I just listed represent the best of what he composed in the collections represented in this book. The rest seem anywhere from mediocre to just plain awful. (I get no joy in saying such a thing.)

***
It is unfortunate that the vast majority of his creations are along the lines of the following examples (which for me lack any real substances in their images):

Tuesday -- one more
drop of rain
From my roof

(This one is just some kind of empty reporting of an image isn't it? What does it being Tuesday have anything to do with one more drop of rain falling from my roof? It is confusing if nothing else.)

Seven birds in a tree,
looking
In every direction

(This is just an empty image with no substance. "Seven" draws attention to itself -- but it does so seemingly for no discernable purpose whatsoever. It seems to me that "Birds in a tree" is preferable to "Seven birds in a tree" because in this instance "seven" is serving only to uselessly distract the reader. Seven birds in a tree looking in every direction simply isn't anything but an unremarkable image.)

When the moon sinks
down to the power line,
I'll go in

(What does the moon sinking down to the power line have to do with deciding to go in at that point? If there was a reason for it he didn't say so. Again no substance to it. Is there supposed to be a connection between the moon and power line? If so, I just don't see it. Just random elements put together seemingly for no reason. Confusing to me.)

***
I do not mean to come off as sounding like some kind of high-handed authority on the matter but I think that most of Mr. Kerouac's so-called haiku quite simply aren't -- but I will give him all the credit in the world for trying as best as he knew how to do it.

Maybe I am unduly punishing Mr. Kerouac for composing really bad haiku when I really ought to be making the point that the vast majority of the material in this book is not worthy of publication because of the objectively inferior quality of the content overall.

It occurs to me that any number of others may disagree with my judgments and may "take me to task" over it -- I respect that.

I hope I have been more helpful than irritating with this review.

If the title of this book would have been "Book of Iambic Pentameters," and not followed the literary format of iambic pentameter poetry, no one would take it seriously. Point: Many of the poems in this collection can be considered haiku, but it is misleading to those seeking true haiku to look to this book for good examples of this ancient genre. As a haiku poet, I don't like much of this book. As a non-genre poet, I think Jack's work is quite enjoyable. I'd pick it up more often if it were titled, "Book of Poetries." And, for those who judge books by their covers, I like the cover... more than the psuedo-haiku contents.