English and Japanese Edition

Anyone new to the study of haiku soon realizes that there are pages and pages of explanations of what makes a successful haiku, pages and pages of rules for writing haiku, endless pages attempting to define haiku. And of course, all the explanations, rules, and definitions contradict one another. A lover of haiku can only smile and accept the contradictions as inherent in the form itself. A haiku, after all, is a poem that offers us a glimpse of paradox obscured by clarity. How is that for a contradiction? Here is advice for a poet just setting out on this journey of haiku: Read haiku. Read every collection of haiku you can find, every haiku journal, every website devoted to this form. And always, always, you will find yourself coming back to the work of Ban'ya Natsuishi and Sayumi Kamakura. Here's the best part: You will find individual haiku by Natsuishi and Kamakura to which you keep returning, not because the haiku soothe or comfort or reveal the answers to the great mysteries of the universe, but because the poems do just the opposite: they bother, they unsettle, they contradict.

Jean LeBlanc
October 19, 2012
Newton, New Jersey, U.S.A.