Publisher's Synopsis
Haiku is an elusive, deceptively difficult form. Its stark conventions require a writer to create an experience combining sharp sense memory with emotion while freighting every syllable of its few words. Figgins has a sure touch with this distilled form. His poems reward both scholar and casual reader. Figgins has been called a master of the haiku form by the editor of one of the many haiku magazines that have published his work. Almost two thousand of his haiku have seen print, over a period of forty years. This volume contains a selection of his favorites. Haiku originated in Japan. Few American readers had heard of haiku until after World War II, when the post-war occupation of Japan introduced aspects of the island nation's rich culture to Americans. The earliest haiku in English were translations of Japanese masters of the form, which had no counterpart in Western culture. Since then, the American haiku movement has blossomed, but the English-language haiku form is rooted in Japanese culture and retains classical Japanese guidelines even as it conveys American experience and sensibility.
