Book of Haikus Book

Remember the old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial where two people collide? "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!" And the rest is delicious magic? Well, that was me picking up Jack Kerouac's Book of Haikus. I love haiku. And I love Kerouac. But I was skeptical about the combination. Fortunately, I ended up as pleasantly surprised as the clumsy snackers.

This volume includes the poems Kerouac selected for his Book of Haikus as well as poems gathered from his novels and notebooks. The poems from Book of Haikus are superior to the others, yet they make up less than half of the volume.

I have mixed feelings about the inclusion of so many poems from Kerouac's novels and notebooks. On the one hand, I can see how they would be of interest to those studying the development of Kerouac's art, but on the other hand, they lower the quality of the volume as a whole. Although I appreciate editor Regina Weinreich's dedication to her project, I think she does Kerouac a disservice by padding the book with weaker poems.

That said, the poems Kerouac selected for Book of Haikus are impressive. I think Basho would be proud. Here are a few of my favorites.

"Quiet moonlit night'
Neighbor boy studying
By telescope; ''Ooo!' " (16)

"In back of the supermarket
in the parking lot weeds,
Purple flowers" (18)

"Glow worm sleeping
on this flower,
Your light's on! " (27)

Kerouac's three-line poems are not composed of seventeen syllables, but they are faithful to the spirit of Japanese haiku. A haiku has two elements: an observation of nature and a sudden perception. Moreover, Basho identified the aesthetic of haiku as one of Karumi, or lightness. I think Kerouac's poems succeed in achieving both the form and the aesthetic of haiku.

Among the notebook poems, I found one that seems to be an earlier version of another one of my favorites. Here is the poem in Book of Haikus.

"Bee, why are you
staring at me?
I'm not a flower!" (15)

Here is the poem from the notebooks.

"Am I a flower
bee, that you
Stare at me?" (155)

Weinreich says that Kerouac revised his poems. This is not something that Kerouac did with his other writings. It seems likely to me that the poem from the notebook was revised into the poem included in Book of Haikus.

"Am I a flower" is moved from the first line to the third line where it becomes an exclamation instead of a question. The whole poem builds up to it. "I'm not a flower!"

The address to the bee is moved from the second line to the first line. This is simpler and more direct. In the earlier poem the address to the bee occurs in the middle of the question. This dilutes the effect of the question. The reader of the revised poem knows right from the start that the question is addressed to the bee.

Addressing the bee in the middle also makes the earlier poem a single complex sentence whereas the revised poem follows the traditional Japanese form of an observation of nature followed by a sudden perception with these two elements divided by a Kireji, or cutting word. In English, the function of the Kireji is often performed by a dash or other punctuation mark.

The first part of the revised poem ~"Bee, why are you/staring at me?" ~ is the question addressed to the bee and the second part of the poem ~ "I'm not a flower!" ~ is the sudden, surprising, and humorous reaction of the speaker.

This comparison between the notebook poem and the Book of Haikus poem is revealing. The poems from Book of Haikus ~ like the haiku of Basho ~ have the feeling of spontaneity, but they are instead carefully crafted poems. The appearance of spontaneity is evidence of the talent of the poet.

I am happy to shelve Kerouac's Book of Haikus alongside my other volumes of haiku. Unless it better belongs with my Beat Generation books. Perhaps I should find out where the peanut butter cups are shelved in the supermarket'with the peanut butter or with the chocolate. But wherever I put Book of Haikus, it has turned out to be a serendipitous discovery for me.