Book of Haikus

By Jack Kerouac and Regina Weinreich

A compact collection of more than 500 poems from Jack Kerouac that reveal a lesser known but important side of his literary legacy

“Above all, a haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi pastorella.”—Jack Kerouac
 
Renowned for his groundbreaking Beat Generation novel On the Road, Jack Kerouac was also a master of the haiku, the three-line, seventeen-syllable Japanese poetic form. Following the tradition of Basho, Buson, Shiki, Issa, and other poets, Kerouac experimented with this centuries-old genre, taking it beyond strict syllable counts into what he believed was the form’s essence. He incorporated his “American” haiku in novels and in his correspondence, notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, and recordings.
 
In Book of Haikus, Kerouac scholar Regina Weinreich has supplemented a core haiku manuscript from Kerouac’s archives with a generous selection of the rest of his haiku, from both published and unpublished sources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781101664889

Jack Kerouac

<B>Jack Kerouac</B> was born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The best-known of his many works, <I>On the Road</I>, published in 1957, was an international bestseller. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of forty-seven.

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Cover image for Book of Haikus

PENGUIN BOOKS

BOOK OF HAIKUS

JACK KEROUAC was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a football scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he met Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, first published in 1957, that made Kerouac one of the most controversial and best-known writers of his time. Publication of his many other books followed, among them The Subterraneans, Big Sur, and The Dharma Bums, in which he describes his discovery of haiku. Kerouac’s books of poetry include Mexico City Blues, Scattered Poems, Pomes All Sizes, Heaven and Other Poems, and Book of Blues. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.

REGINA WEINREICH teaches in the Department of Humanities and Sciences at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has published widely in periodicals including The New York Times, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Village Voice, and in the literary journals The Paris Review and Five Points. She is the author of Kerouac’s Spontaneous Poetics: A Study of the Fiction. She was a writer on the documentary The Beat Generation: An American Dream and a producer/director of Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider.

by Jack Kerouac

the town and the city

the scripture of the golden eternity

some of the dharma

old angel midnight

good blonde and others

pull my daisy

trip trap

pic

the portable jack kerouac

selected letters: 1940–1956

selected letters: 1957–1969

atop an underwood

orpheus emerged

POETRY

mexico city blues

scattered poems

pomes all sizes

heaven and other poems

book of blues

THE DULUOZ LEGEND

visions of gerard

doctor sax

maggie cassidy

vanity of duluoz

on the road

visions of cody

the subterraneans

tristessa

lonesome traveller

desolation angels

the dharma bums

book of dreams

big sur

satori in paris

Jack Kerouac

BOOK

OF

HAIKUS

Edited and with an Introduction by

Regina Weinreich

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published in Penguin Books 2003

Copyright © The Estate of Stella Kerouac, John Sampas, Literary Representative, 2003

Introduction copyright © Regina Weinreich, 2003

All rights reserved

Artwork by Jack Kerouac from the Berg Collection of The New York Public Library. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Stella Kerouac, John Sampas, Literary Representative.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Kerouac, Jack, 1922–1969

Book of haikus / Jack Kerouac; edited and with an introduction by Regina Weinreich.

p.  cm.

Includes bibiographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-101-66488-9

1. Haiku, American. 2. Nature—Poetry. I. Weinreich, Regina, 1949–. II. Title.

PS3521.E735 B66  2003

811’.54—dc21      2002032269

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Cover design by Jesse Marinoff Reyes

Cover portrait by Riccardo Vecchio

Version_1

For Bob, Nina, Jane and Rick

And to the memory of Seymour Krim, who first

saw Kerouac’s nutty haikus.

Contents

Introduction: The Haiku Poetics of Jack Kerouac

Acknowledgments

BOOK OF HAIKUS

I. Book of Haikus

II. Dharma Pops

NOTEBOOKS

III. 1956: Desolation Pops ⁄ SPRING

IV. 1957: Road Haikus ⁄ SUMMER

V. 1958–1959: Beat Generation Haikus ⁄ AUTUMN

VI. 1960–1966: Northport Haikus ⁄ WINTER

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Reviews for Book of Haikus

[soitgoes5-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this collection. I will share a few of my favorites. Kerouac does not write purely in the traditional form of three lines with 5, 7,and 5 syllables. He also writes "American haikus" which are simple three line poems without a fixed number of syllables.

Listen to the birds sing!
All the little birds
Will die!

Dusk-the bird
on the fence
A contemporary of mine

Useless! Useless!
-heavy rain driving
Into the sea

Train tunnel, too dark
for me to write that
"Men are ignorant!"

Dawn-the writer who
hasn't shaved,
Poring over notebooks

Little pieces of ice
in the moonlight
Snow, thousands of em

Praying all the time-
talking
to myself

Shall I break God's commandment?
Little fly
Rubbing it's back legs

[princessponti · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Jack Kerouac's Haikus, perfect anytime reading. He had an amazing talent for creating a whole scene for the senses in just three tiny lines. Whenever I need a little inspiration I pick up this book. 

[andreablythe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Book of Haikus compiles Jack Kerouac's haiku from various published works and journals (Regina Weinreich does an excellent job with the introduction and with the asides throughout).

Kerouac breaks away from the Japanese syllable counting tradition of 5-7-5 per line. Instead he developed his own standard of American Haikus, which often exists in direct relation to the Japanese haikuists. His haiku bends the traditions further, playing with seasonal references in new ways and infusing humor into his lines. Sometimes dark sometimes light-hearted, his haiku are always (or almost always) poignant. Kerouac's haiku and his love of Japanese haiku inspires me to want to read the traditional Japanese greats.

I quite enjoyed the poetry throughout this book, and I found it inspirational to my own writing. I'm enthralled by the haiku form, how so much can be said in such a small space. I'm going to have to buy my own personal copy, so that I can flip through it randomly as I'm out and about in the world.