In Memoriam: George Knox

Avid haiku poet, bonsai enthusiast, and retired English professor George Knox passed away on June 16, 1999, in Riverside, California. An enthusiastic writer of mostly traditional-style haiku, Knox excelled at creating poems with whimsical humor. After receiving his BA from Reed College in Oregon, Knox enlisted in the USNR and served in the Amphibious Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, until December, 1945. He later married Elizabeth Hydinger, earned his MA degree in English from the University of Oregon, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. With their three young children, George and Elizabeth moved to Riverside, California, in 1954, where George joined the faculty of the Division of Humanities at the University of California, Riverside. He later joined the Department of English and taught there until his retirement in 1984. His specialties were 19th century and modem British and American literatures. He also taught American literature at the Universities of Vienna, Erlangen-Niimberg, and Trier during sabbatical leaves. During his teaching career, Knox wrote and edited several academic books. In 1994 he self-published a collection of his haiku entitled Tendrils of the Eye, in which he said that he never really “experienced” haiku and other Japanese forms until after his retirement, despite being familiar with them beforehand. “Since then,” he wrote, “haiku has become closely compatible with my devotion to bonsai, and in fact a daily preoccupation.” George revised his poems tirelessly (as an editor, I never knew when he was done!), and he took great delight in language and seeing the lightness of living. His poems were sometimes quirky, but predominantly well-crafted, and often made literary, artistic, geographical, and historical allusions that would challenge readers who read too casually. He was a poet who found his voice, even if it may have been offbeat and sometimes at his own rhythm—it was a rhythm that I grew to appreciate. George had an infectious enthusiasm for haiku and a love of language that made his poems distinctive. In recent years George and his wife, Elizabeth (also a haiku poet), were loyal participants in the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society’s annual haiku retreat at Asilomar, where his presence will be particularly missed.

Also included with this appreciation were three of George’s haiku, the first two from Tendrils of the Eye, his only book of haiku, published in 1993, and the third from Still Life with Stars, the 1996 Yuki Teikei members’ Anthology:

calling to his wife

come listen to the tree frog

the sudden silence

fall camphor berries

gathering dust on my desk

I’d planned to taste them

dousing New Year’s lights

in an impulsive embrace

clash of bifocals