Mat's Reviews > Book of Haikus

Fantastic.
Kerouac displays true mastership of this form of poetry. Intelligently avoiding the restricting rules of traditional, conventional Japanese haiku, Kerouac invents the form here which he calls 'pops' - short, concise three-line poems which are very effective. Where Kerouac does not follow the 'rules' syllabically, he does in terms of including seasonal words - the moon, the sun, leaves, noon - all symbolic of the season in which the haiku was written, even the 'winter fly' which ingeniously refers to the END of winter, i.e. the advent of Spring.

Out of all of Kerouac's poetry, I believe that this has to be some of his strongest work, right up there with the ingenious, the timeless Mexico City Blues. Many people wrote Jack off because of his beliefs about spontaneous prose and Truman Capote's old hack that he was just "typing" not "writing" - well, time has shown, with increasing evidence, that he was a significant writer in American society, who in the later half of the twentieth century was apparently told by God to "go moan for Man" and someone whose quality of writing has consistently shown that he deserves more attention and acclaim.