A Few Words on the Way: Haiku and Short Poems

By Rodger Wilkie

This collection of some 300 haiku and other short poems offers my best attempt at engaging this complex and versatile genre. The first half is an extended and more or less traditional seasonal sequence. The second half contains shorter thematically linked sequences, and a number of free standing pieces. I am particularly indebted to Basho, Buson, Issa, Li Po, and Tu Fu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rodger Wilkie
• Release date: Mar 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005206253

Rodger Wilkie

Originally from Windsor, Ontario, I grew up in the Toronto area, graduated from Dunbarton High School in Pickering, and later attended both the University of Toronto (St. Michael's College, BA) and the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton, MA, PhD). I've worked as a night shift janitor, tree planter, drugstore assistant manager, ESL instructor, and teacher of literature, non-Western thought, and human rights, those last two of which I currently enjoy doing at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. I taught for four years in South Korea, and my travels have taken me to various locations in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Longstanding interests in fantasy literature, mythology, science, and the philosophy and poetry of East and South-East Asia, have all influenced my writing in one way or another, as has my love of hiking, camping, and paddling.

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A Few Words on the Way

Haiku and Short Poems

Copyright 2022 Rodger Wilkie

Published by Rodger Wilkie at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue: Black Bear Haiku

Part One: Within Seasons

Spring

Summer

Fall

Winter

Part Two: Without Seasons

Korea

Crashing Through Maps

The Extended Family

The Hometown

The Folks

The Kid

A Sequence in Response to Basho 389

Some Haiku for Animal Lovers

This and That

About the Author

Connect with Rodger

Author’s Note

I've spent my adult life engaged, first as a reader and later as a teacher, with one or another worldview emanating from East or South-East Asia, and have long been a reader not just of the philosophic but also of the mythic and poetic literatures of the region. At the time these poems were composed, mostly between 2014 and 2016, I was immersed in a long exploration of the haiku genre, both in its best classical exemplars and in the thought worlds that inform much of their work—particularly Ch'an/Zen Buddhism, and the contribution to that worldview by the classical Taoist/Daoist thinker and all-around intellectual mischief maker Chuang-Tzu/Zhuangzi. Probably