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The Haiku Handbook -25th Anniversary Edition: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku Paperback – March 1, 2010
With a new foreword by poet, translator, and author Jane Reichhold (Basho: The Complete Haiku), this anniversary edition presents a concise history of the Japanese haiku, including the dynamic changes throughout the twentieth century as this beloved poetry form has been adapted to modern and urban settings. Full chapters are offered on form, the seasons in haiku, and haiku craft, plus background on the Japanese poetic tradition and the effect of translation on our understanding of haiku. Other unique features are chapters on teaching and sharing haiku, with lesson plans for both elementary and secondary school use; a seasonal word index of poetic words; a comprehensive glossary; and a list of enduring classic resources for further exploration. By any standard, The Haiku Handbook is the defining volume in the genre.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKodansha USA
- Publication dateMarch 1, 2010
- Dimensions8.2 x 0.9 x 5.6 inches
- ISBN-104770031130
- ISBN-13978-4770031136
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Book Description
About the Author
PENNY HARTER is a much-published and award-winning poet, a poet-in-residence for the New Jersey State Council of the Arts and a teacher who travels widely giving workshops and lectures.
Product details
- Publisher : Kodansha USA; Anniversary edition (March 1, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 4770031130
- ISBN-13 : 978-4770031136
- Item Weight : 1.01 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.2 x 0.9 x 5.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,541,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #769 in Haiku & Japanese Poetry
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

A descendant of Quakers, Jim Tipton was the embodiment of gentleness, kindness, and fairness—but most of all love. He was a philosopher and practitioner of these values, which came to define him. Tipton was a wanderer and seeker who gravitated to San Francisco in the 1960s and hung out at City Lights Bookstore soaking up the influences of Beat Generation poets. For thirteen years beginning in 1992-2005 he lived a solitary life as a beekeeper in the desert highlands of Colorado, where he studied the minimalist existence of creatures and plants as he searched for answers to what is truly important in life. Although he had written and published poems for many years, it was during this passage that he discovered his most powerful, emotional, and authentic voice in poetry.
Tipton published over a thousand poems, short stories, essays, and reviews in journals including The Nation, Southern Humanities Review, American Literary Review, Esquire, International Poetry Review, Modern English Tanka, Modern Haiku, Atlas Poetica, and The Christian Science Monitor. His collection of poems, Letters from a Stranger, with a foreword by Isabel Allende, won the 1999 Colorado Book Award in Poetry. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, French, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Danish, and Norwegian.
In 2005, Tipton moved to the village of Chapala in central Mexico, where he mentored a coterie of promising writers and continued to write and publish. He died at home on May 16, 2018, two weeks after the publication of his last collection of poems,The Alphabet of Longing and Other Poems.

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Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
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Part One: Haiku Old and New [A great introduction to the experience of haiku and to Japanese Masters. The "Why Haiku" is helpful in clarifying one's purpose for writing such brief poetry.]
Part Two: The Art of Haiku [Natural themes, the form and craft of haiku; this is the section that I like best, and I repeatedly refer back to these pages. I especially enjoy how the author discusses the difference in Japanese and English languages.]
Part Three: Teaching Haiku [How to teach haiku writing to children, lesson plan included]
Part Four: Before and Beyond Haiku [Haiku and its uses]
Reference Section [With Season-Word List & Glossary]
Overall, this is a worthy product for anyone who wishes to delve into haiku more deeply than the introduction that most Westerners receive.
The Haiku Handbook -25th Anniversary Edition: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku
This book goes into the traditions of haiku at great length and enables a serious student to understand what a haiku actually is, and how to tell a good one from a second-rate one.
For poets who'd like to try writing haiku, this book gives an overwhelming amount of information. I'd recommend going slow and reading and rereading useful sections rather than dashing through it and trying to apply everything you've learned all at once.
One useful feature of the book is an extensive list of traditional season-words (a traditional haiku always has a season-word). Looking over the list may help you find a season word that can act as a poetry prompt for your next haiku.
Top reviews from other countries
Alan Summers
President, United Haiku and Tanka Society
Japan Times award-winning writer for haiku and renku
co-founder, Call of the Page
p.s. When I first heard about haiku, and wondered what it was all about, I was so lucky to walk into a small branch library (Ipswich, Queensland) and find two copies! I read my borrowed copy through a plane flight and a week's holiday, and again and again borrowed the book until I bought my own copy. I have never looked back.
From a book on how to write haiku I would have expected actual writing instructions, taking the student through the process step by step. I would want lessons for complete novices guiding their first attempts, and more in-depth tuition for those who have progressed beyond the basics. The book doesn't offer that.
From a book on how to teach haiku I would have expected something like a lesson plan or a course plan, with teaching materials and assignment suggestions for different levels and teaching tips. The book doesn't contain that either.
Sure, the book is useful for writers and teachers, but as a source of information and background, not as a study course or teaching material.
If you already write haiku, and want gain a deeper understanding, then this is a good book. It certainly goes way beyond the 5-7-5 pattern, and looks at the elements that make a genuine haiku (e.g. the season clue, the moment of pause, the spiritual inspiration).
I would recommend this book for people who already know how to write haiku, and want to give their poetry more authenticity and depth.




