What Haiku Requires | October 7, 2014
[Basho] practiced Zen without insignia
or ordination. Every decade he experienced a catastrophic reordering of
his life. 'Let my name be "Traveler,"' he implored, following the narrow
road of poetry to the far north. He shattered clever wordplay haiku to
create a new mosaic of language, solitary and raw. 'The old verse can be
about willows,' he observed, 'but haiku requires crows picking snails
in a rice paddy.'
- Wendy Johnson, "Seventeen Syllable Medicine"
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