what a treat! these haikus were some of my favorites i've ever read from any author. every single one of these reads so fresh, is imbued with such wit and humor, while at the same time carrying the weight of the human experience in the way that your father does when he has had a long day at work and you catch his face when you think no one is looking. what a way to look at the world--to see through the eyes of such an intelligent and restless individual in a medium where he is fully himself, and the story is openly his own. highly recommend listening to his blues and haikus album after reading this--he uses many haikus from the book for that album and hearing him read them in his own voice is a delight that one doesn't often get to experience with poetry.

You can listen to a studio recording of Kerouac reciting poems from his series American Haikus, backed by the jazz saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims for their album Blues and Haikus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30mXV...


I don't particularly enjoy reading Haiku, both the Japanese and the so-called Western haiku (*), which Kerouac has re-named “American Pops”.(**)
I find this form of poetry dull and dare I say boring (I wrote a long study on Haiku when I reviewed several Haiku collections and anthologies that I have read in Arabic and French).
I enjoyed however reading Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...

I wasn’t really impressed by Kerouac’s poems, they undoubtedly reveal a fertile imagination but some were dry and others felt shallow..
Kerouac’s haiku encapsulate an abrupt emotion or a mystical vision , an observation that is oftenly delivered with humour and sarcasm, a brief weird impression or a distillation of a scene or a fading memory.
For Ginsberg his haiku poems are n  « the most “uncrafted stuff” in the world.[..] his craft is spontaneity [..] instantaneous recall of the unconscious [..] prefect executive conjunction of archetypal memorial images articulating present observation of detail and childhood epiphany fact.”n

Kerouac is no doubt capable of crafting stunning images. His haiku show the influence of the imagists, mainly Ezra Pound.
We can also perceive in these haiku the major influence of the Zen Buddhism, as a religion and a culture. Dissatisfied with the state of the western culture, Kerouac sought a cure in the Japanese philosophy. He has also embraced it in his life as an alternative to the socialist and secular convictions, to which he was fiercely opposed, adopted by his comrades of the Beat generation..
Ginsberg asserted that the method of spontaneous composition is connected to the practice of Zen Buddhism and the fact that in Japanese calligraphic painting, people are literally able to capture one phrase in one image.
However, according to many critics, Kerouac's approach to Buddhism in these poems indicate a superficial understanding of its philosophy.(***),

Many of the Haiku in this collection tell a wisdom through metaphors. Short and concise, they are moreover similar to ancient Eastern spiritual proverbs :

Walking on water wasn't

Built in a day

The sound of silence
Is all the instruction

You'll get
**
What is a rainbow,
Lord? – a hoop
For the lowly
**
The Golden Gate
creaks
With sunset rust
**

(*) the American or the Western Haikus depict Haikus written by western poets and to which the basic rules of the Japanese Haiku don’t apply. They even vary in line-length.
This review explores Kerouac's innovative and personalized Haikus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/op...

(**) He wrote:
Then I’ll invent
The American Haiku type:
The simple rhyming triolet:-- Seventeen syllables?
No, as I say, American Pops:-- Simple 3-line poems.
[from Jack Foley’s article “Beat Haikus”
https://terebess.hu/english/haiku/fol... ]

(***)I recommend this helpful and informative brief article: it defines the elements of the Zen haiku, explains its essential techniques and highlights the rules of the haiku crafting
http://www.mercy-center.org/PDFs/EW/H...

You'd be surprised
How little I knew
Even up to yesterday

***

Haiku, shmaiku, I cant
understand the intention
Of reality

***

The sound of silence
is all the instruction
You'll get

***

The fly, just as
lonesome as I am
In this empty house

The other man, just as
lonesome as I am
In this empty universe

Loved it. It was very simple and sincere.

ریویوی ۲۰۲۰ - بر اساس هایکوهای نسل بیت با ترجمه‌ی علیرضا بهنام

بچه‌های نسل بیت هایکوی هفده سیلابی ژاپن را برداشتند و آمریکایی کردند. هرچه بیشتر از پیچیدگی و آرایه‌ها پرهیز کردند و به توصیفِ خالصِ «حس» پرداختند؛ حس دیدن طبیعت، یا یک اتفاق روزمره.
حالا این همه تلاش شاعران برای دوری از استعاره را در نظر بگیرید، و حرکت جناب شروین پاشایی را که آمده عکس مگس و پوتین و دیوار کشیده زیر شعرهایی درباره‌ی مگس‌ها و ماهی‌ها و قدم زدن‌ها. لااله‌الاالله.

***
ریویوی ۲۰۱۹ - بر اساس هایکوهای امریکایی با ترجمه‌ی فرید قدمی

طیّ طریق
یعنی
رسیدن به صدای سکوت

*

به بیشه‌زار رفتم
به مکاشفه
زیادی سرد بود امّا

SUNDAY HAIKU

jack reads jack: malik
my father’s name, kerouac
his family’s name.

Kerouac's poetic style is simultaneously classic, witty, and often humorous. He masterfully and effortlessly subverts the haiku genre of poetry and delivers poignant, potent 'pops' on classic haiku subjects as well as intriguing, relatable, uniquely American phenomena as well. Where I believe the book begins to fall flat, however, is towards the final fourth of the book where Kerouac's non-haiku/senryu poetry is included; while useful in understanding Kerouac as a man, it feels out of place in this collection of haiku and senryu.

There were only a few mention-able haikus, but the rest were rather just bored doodles.

Not bad but I don't think the sparseness of the haiku form and its precise demands really play to Kerouac's strengths-- to me what I want from Kerouac, and what I feel he does best, is the more freewheeling, improvisational writing whose effect is intended to evoke or outright mimic the quality of a jazz horn player blowing on and riffing on a theme; consequently the "choruses" of Mexico City Blues (IMO his masterpiece as a poet) and many of those in Book of Blues are much more successful, I think, than what we get from him in this volume. Certainly worth a read for Kerouac enthusiasts and maybe for those interested in Western approaches to the traditional Japanese poetic form, but not essential.

لقد حث كيرواك نفسه على كتابة الهايكو، ممتلئًا بالطرق التقليدية له.

مع تنوع أنواع الشعر التي قام بكتابتها جاك كيرواك، والتي لم يكن بينها رابط معين سوى فكرة الكتابة الشعرية الخالية من التكلف إلى درجة كبيرة، لربما أفقدتها المعنى أحيانًا!

ولكنّ هناك رقة يمكن العثور عليها من حين إلى آخر، كلمات جذلة مدفونةٌ في عمق المعنى واختلاف "النوتة الموسيقية" التي لم نعتدها لربما نحن القراء العرب، ورغم هذا وذاك استطعت أن أتلصص على خبايا هذا المعنى، أو لربما ما ظننته معنى؛ ما أشعرني بشيء ما، شعور صاف، مريح ومختلف وأعتقد أنها وظيفة الشعر.

رافقتني هذه المادة الشعرية لشهور طوال، وهذا ما أعامل به الشعر عادةً.

These are not haiku.

Kerouac's haiku are my favorite of all his poetry. Humorous and simply, blissfully insightful.