The threads of haiku run through many layers of Japanese society — from school-age recitations and the Emperor's New Year's greetings to Twitter or text battles — laid across eloquence and understatement in three lines. These strands of poetic thought stretch across the seas as well, as Jeffrey Johnson points out in his introduction of "Haiku Poetics in the Twentieth Century."
Worldwide, today, haiku "extends from a refrigerator magnet pastime and a poetic formula taught to many schoolchildren to the poetic archetype for serious poetry publications." A multicultural and multilingual exploration of poetry's 17-syllable wonder-form, "Haiku Poetics" is essential reading for any poet or critic of 21st century poetics, East or West.
Any critical study of poetry involves an exercise of the mind; therefore, expect a rather strenuous workout with the first chapter. A good dictionary will allow you to hurdle through the meaning of specific poetic terms, causing momentary stumbles, but don't worry: The rest of the book fascinates as it informs in crisp, clear prose. Johnson's central points converge into gorgeous illumination as he traces the evolution of haiku, first establishing its traditions in Japan before moving to early translations and haiku within Imagism in the early 1900s. Johnson sketches out international innovations from France to Spain to Latin America, finally ending in America with the Beat poets of the 1950s.