Haiku in English The First Hundred Years

by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, Allan Burns

Info

Date Finished: 8/24/2026

First Sentence: In a station of the metro, The apparition of these faces in a crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Last Sentence: Snow at dawn...dead singers in their prime on the radio.

Companion Album:

New Cover

Book cover on a pale sage background. Bold dark-green sans-serif title, "Haiku in English," sits at upper left above the subtitle "The First Hundred Years." Smaller type at upper right reads "Edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns" and "Introduction by Billy Collins." Below fills the lower two-thirds, a rounded-corner panel holding a duotone reproduction of a nineteenth-century canyon landscape painting, everything flattened into shades of the same olive green — a gnarled juniper on a rocky ledge in the foreground, layered mesas and cloud-hazed cliffs receding behind it.

A Few Thoughts

Haiku in English is an anthology of 800+ haiku written in English, charting the form's evolution from the early 1900s to the modern day. The introduction gives a succinct foundation of haiku knowledge so you know just enough to piece together why the anthologists chose these poems. At the end is a more thorough essay explaining the role each poet plays in moving the art form forward.

One thing I learned early on is that the 5-7-5 construction of a haiku, as we in the West are often taught, is a gross oversimplification. Reducing the form to what is essentially a game of wordplay misses the point and cheapens its artistic merit.

There are also interesting questions: What are the limits of a language's ability to communicate? Are there ideas you can only express in Japanese? I don't know, but the debates regarding what a haiku is do often broach these kinds of questions.

This anthology is just the start for me. I'm going to read Writing Haiku next, alongside Narrow Road to the Interior (which I borrowed from a friend). Should be fun!