The Nick of Time

The Nick of Time: Essays on Haiku Aesthetics

Paul O. Williams

Edited and introduced by Lee Gurga and Michael Dylan Welch

Showcases 16 essays vital to an understanding of issues facing the English-language haiku poet, plus selections of 40 haiku and senryu by the author. Winner of a Merit Book Award for best criticism in the 2002 awards from the Haiku Society of America (for books published in 2001).


gone from the woods

the bird I knew

by song alone


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2001, perfectbound, 112 pages, 6 x 9 inches, ISBN 978-1-878798-23-5


The following is the table of contents for The Nick of Time. Links lead to essays available on this website.


The Middle Way: Paul O. Williams’ Essays on Haiku

(introduction by Lee Gurga and Michael Dylan Welch)


Tontoism in American Haiku (1975)

Loafing Alertly: Observation and Haiku (1981)

An Apology for Bird Track Haiku (1981)

The Aura of Haiku (1982)


Selections from Tracks on the River (1982)


The Lasting and Ephemeral in Haiku (1989)

Haiku Memory (1989)

A Dialog about Haiku Reviewing (1990)

A Dialog on Baloney Haiku (1992)


A Selection of Senryu (1975–1996)


Haiku and the Art of Fiction (1991)

Engagement and Detachment in Haiku and Senryu (1993)

The Limits of Haiku Form (1991, 1993)


Selections from Outside Robins Sing (1999)


The Question of Articles in Haiku (1989)

The Question of Words in Haiku (1993)

The Question of Subjectivity in Haiku (1995)

The Question of Metaphor in Haiku (1993)


Selections from Outside Robins Sing and Other Poems (19832000)


A Pre-Electronic View of the World (1996)