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In last years of his life, Richard Wright, fierce and original American novelist known for Native Son and Black Boy, wrote over four thousand haiku. In Richard Wright and Haiku, Yoshinobu Hakutani considers Wright poet and his late devotion to spare, unrhymed verse that dwells on human beings' relationship to natural world rather than on their relationships with one another, a strong departure from intense and often conflicted relationships that had dominated his fiction. Wright was not only famous American author to be attracted to art of haiku. Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation novelist known for On Road and The Dharma Bums, also explored form and wrote many haiku. For guidance Wright and Kerouac both turned to four-volume critical history and collection Haiku by R. H. Blythe. Wright went on to emulate such classic haiku poets as Basho, Buson, and Issa as well as modernist Shiki. Richard Wright and Haiku is presented in two parts. In first, Hakutani traces genesis and development of haiku in Japan, discusses role of earlier poets, including Yone Noguchi and Ezra Pound, in verse's development in Japan and in West, and deals with both haiku and haiku criticism written in English. He goes on to describe how Wright acquired theory and technique of haiku composition and offers a historical and critical study of Wright's haiku. Integral to Hakutani's analysis is an exploration of what Wright in his Black Power: A Record of Reactions in Land of Pathos called the African primal outlook upon life. Hakutani delves into how this view inspired Wright to turn to first study of and then writing of haiku. In final chapter of first part, Hakutani invites readers to try seeing Wright's haiku as senryu, or humorous haiku. This departure from relentlessly serious lens through which nearly all of Wright's work is viewed by critics helps to expand readers' perspectives on poems and on Wright himself. In part two, Hakutani presents a selection of Wright's poems from Haiku: This Other World. Each of selected haiku is accompanied by a note that will provide assistance in interpretation and offers such additional information as definitions of critical or technical terms and bibliographical details. Richard Wright and Haiku is a valuable addition to critical discussion of life and works of Richard Wright as well as a welcome contribution to scholarship on haiku in West.
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