The Craft of Writing Haiku

[chibi575]

There is an excellent book by the late Paul O. Williams, "The Nick of Time: Essays on the Haiku Aesthetics" I would recommend.  Paul had a very easy and undrestandable style that can get complex concepts across.  Some of the table of contents chapters I recommend: Tontoism in American Haiku, Loafing Alertly: Observation and Haiku, The Lasting and the Ephemeral in Haiku; Haiku Memory; A Dialog on Baloney Haiku; and The Limits of Haiku Form.  I recommend the whole book but these were my personal favorite chapters.

I was lucky to have met and talked with Paul at HNA in Winston-Salem, 2007, the year before his passing.  I really found him insightful and his book useful and thought provoking.

[Lynne Rees]

There is an excellent book by the late Paul O. Williams, "The Nick of Time: Essays on the Haiku Aesthetics" I would recommend. 

Hi chibi - yes, a brilliant book, really inspiring. It's part of my list of favourite haiku writing books. The two others I always return to are:

Haiku, A Poet's Guide - Lee Gurga (Modern Haiku Press, 2003)
Writing and Enjoying Haiku, A Hands-on Guide, Jane Reichold (Kodansha International, 2002)

[chibi575]

Thanks for further references, Lynne.

There is another author that I feel is highly underrated, Robin D. Gill.  His style is enjoyably unorthodox (in my opinion) but he stuffs so much in his work and his translator experience of 20 years in Japan gives a rare insight.  I recommend any of his books.  I would not recommend his works for the very beginner, but, more for the dedicated experienced poet familiar with Japanese poetry.  I have been reading/re-reading, "Rise Ye Sea Slugs!" for the last 2 years (I'm not finished yet as I read only occasioinaly) but when I do (because I like to do my own translation of the Japanese presented in his work) it sometimes takes up to 30 minutes to do an indepth absorbtion of what "Keigu" (his haigou) has to say on a page.

Happy Holidays!