ABSTRACT
This chapter makes the claim that good haiku should be good poetry, offering a critique of haiku reception, both in Japan and globally. Haiku is positioned as an avant-garde form that resists definition, with the warning made that any constrictions limit the possibilities inherent in haiku. It begins by tracing proto-haiku in Japanese literary history and moves to a discussion of one of Bashō’s most representative haiku as model for writing. The chapter distinguishes between “excellent” and “mediocre” haiku and posits, with reference to the visual arts tradition of ukiyo-e, that the best haiku build a “verbal universe” of meanings that includes “contrasting elements.” While asserting that haiku differs from short poems, the chapter eschews a comprehensive definition of haiku, claiming that “haiku is always avant-garde.”
