marlene mountain
essay
october 1986

a favorite haiku (if only...)

raining at every window *

I love this haiku. I want so much to believe in it. To find only joy in it.

I do and I don't.

It's everything haiku is . . .

Yet, I've come to perceive it (and the majority of haiku written today) as an 'if only' haiku. Nature haiku has run out of nature. Pure nature.

* Cor van den Heuvel, Wind Chimes #9 1983

Hiroaki Sato, HAIKU IN ENGLISH: A POETIC FORM EXPANDS, Simul Press, Tokyo, 1987;
Modern Haiku  20:1 1989

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