I am pleased to welcome you to Juxtapositions 7, an issue rich in its presentation of scholarship, art, resources, and reviews.
Each essay submitted to Juxtapositions undergoes a rigorous process of blind peer review. Many essays are rejected or returned for significant revision and the invitation to resubmit them. Others are accepted with minor revisions, and a limited number are accepted with no additional revision requirements. We have four fine essays in Juxtapositions 7, and I’m delighted to say that two of them are by members of the editorial board: Adam Kern’s “A Certain Tightness in the Chest: Sarasen (Salaryman Senryū) on 3-11, Covid-19, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and Other Such Catastrophes” and Crystal Simone Smith’s “The Haiku in Amiri Baraka’s Low Coup.” Their work is joined by Amanda Monteleone’s essay, “Living in Community: The More-than-Human World in Gerald Vizenor’s Haiku,” and Jianqing Zheng’s essay, “Reading Classical Chinese Poetry with a Haiku Mind: A Writing Practice.”
This issue also includes a very special addition: Black folk art by Amiri Baraka, with examples referenced in Crystal Simone Smith’s essay. The images are printed with permission of Ishmael Reed Publishing Company. We are grateful to Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed. With the images’ similarity to haiga and relevance to Smith’s article, they are an exciting and important addition to the issue in place of the haiga usually published here.
As always, we strive to include information about resources that will aid scholars researching haiku-related topics. Josh Hockensmith, also on the editorial board, built on a previous annotated bibliography created by former editor, Randy M. Brooks, adding entries for the most current scholarship in the field.
Finally, we round out the issue with four book reviews arranged by Book Review Editor, David Grayson: Matsuo Bashō: Travel Writings by Steven D. Carter (reviewer Adam Kern); The Life and Zen Haiku Poetry of Santoka Taneda by Oyama Sumita and translated by William Scott Wilson (reviewer J. Zimmerman); American Haiku: New Readings by Toru Kiuchi (reviewer J. Zimmerman); and American Haiku, Eastern Philosophies, and Modernist Poetics by Yoshinobu Hakutani (reviewer Keith Ekiss).
Juxtapositions would not be in its seventh year and preparing for its eighth without the work of the editorial board members past and present, Managing Editor Jim Kacian, and The Haiku Foundation for supporting what continues to be the only English-language, peer-reviewed journal of haiku scholarship.
Please enjoy Juxtapositions 7.
Ce Rosenow
Senior Editor