Naming HaikuOriginally published in Alsop Review, 2004, as a spontaneous part of my correspondence with Jack Foley about Jack Kerouac and Beat haiku. The original Alsop Review appearance is no longer online, but the text has been republished on Terebess Asia Online, and is also available at “Beat Haiku and My Discussion with Jack Foley.” +
“A haiku should be as simple as porridge.” —Jack Kerouac
A rose by any other name is still a rose. The map is not the thing. The name is not the thing. In the beginning was the word, and the word was God. By naming the animals in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve asserted dominance over them. You can decide to call a cupcake a billboard, but no one will understand you. Haiku is a word for a genre of poetry whose popular perception does not match its literary reality. What is called haiku may or may not be a haiku, but he who calls it a haiku may feel that he has dominion over what he has written because he has given it a name. The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.
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