American Haiku, Eastern Philosophies, and Modernist Poetics

Download or read book American Haiku, Eastern Philosophies, and Modernist Poetics written by Yoshinobu Hakutani and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Haiku, Eastern Philosophies, and Modernist Poetics traces the genesis and development of haiku in Japan as it transformed over the years and eventually made its way to the Western world. Yoshinobu Hakutani analyzes the prominent Eastern philosophies expressed through haiku, such as Confucianism and Zen, and the aesthetic principles of yugen, sabi, and wabi. Hakutani discusses several reinventions of haiku, from Matsuo Basho’s transformation of the classic haiku, to Masaoka Shiki’s modernist perspectives expressing subjective thoughts and feelings, and eventually to Yone Noguchi’s introduction of haiku to the Western world through W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. Hakutani argues that the adoption and transformation of haiku is one of the most popular East-West artistic, cultural, and literary exchanges to have taken place in modern and postmodern times.