Embedded Files
Originally 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.” I think also of Jorge Luis Borges, who said, “Beyond the name there lies what has no name.” +
“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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