The Haiku Handbook is the first book to give the reader everything needed to begin writing or teaching haiku. It presents haiku poets writing in English, Spanish, French, German, and five other languages on an equal footing with Japanese poets. Not only are the four great Japanese masters of the haiku represented (Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki) but also several major Western authors not commonly known to have written haiku.
How to Write
This is not a writing manual, nor a guide to grammar, nor to rhetoric. Obviously not: look at its length, or lack of it. It is only a small book aiming to help you form ideas about writing, and to write whenever you want to. Writing need not be an ordeal nor an impossible feat. It is a do-able task: one that becomes a pleasure when you get into it. Reading this book should make writing easier, and should keep you from breaking your head in attempts on the impossible. But I don’t guarantee masterpieces. In fact, I don’t mean to deal with creative writing. How could one ever generalize about the ways of creative writers? Their methods are individual to a fault: some pursue total spontaneity; some mull over poems for months and then
write them in a day
If
there is a subject of really universal interest and utility, it is the
art of writing and speaking one's own language effectively. It is the
basis of culture, as we all know; but it is infinitely more than that:
it is the basis of business. No salesman can sell anything unless he
can explain the merits of his goods in effective English (among
our people), or can write an advertisement equally effective, or
present his ideas, and the facts, in a letter. Indeed, the way we talk,
and write letters, largely determines our success in life...
