Shaped by R.H. Blyth and later Kenneth Yasuda’s seminal introductions to Japanese haiku in the midtwentieth
century, haiku in America has as a form of poetry come to reflect certain premises, expectations and
inhibitions. While claiming authentic emulation of the form, American haiku poets have abandoned possibilities
for disturbing the fiction of the real, the so-called haiku or Zen “moment,” and reproduce fundamentally
Orientalist stereotypes that both contribute to its popularity and weaken it as a serious literary form. Below I
argue that John Ashbery’s haiku transgress this status quo in American haiku. American haiku has primarily
focused on a rhetorical presentation of a passively experienced objective moment, which reflects only one
approach to Japanese haiku, while in Ashbery one finds not only his own poetics irrupting in the haiku form, but
also his re-introduction of writing practices found in traditional Japanese poetry to satirize American haiku. As
such, his haiku stand as an amusing performative critique of haiku in twentieth century America and of haiku as
received from Japanese models.
關聯:
Taiwan ELT Publishing, Globalization and Cultural Identity / Translation
