Essays
Eyes Wide Open
On the Haiku Path
The Book
2021
Essays
21 x 14,7 cm
92 pages
Softcover
ISBN10: 978-0748662371
Dublin: The Fishing Cat Press.
The Fishing Cat Press (Dublin, Ireland) is delighted to announce the publication of Kenneth White’s Eyes Wide Open on the haiku path, featuring eight of his essays on the way of haiku and a choice of his haiku, ranging over Europe, America and Asia, selected by the author.
Kenneth White, who has long enjoyed an extra-ordinary reputation as a highly influential author at the forefront of modern literature, has decided to gather together all his writings on haiku, a path he has long trodden and explored throughout his poetry, essays and ‘waybooks’.
White drew attention to haiku as early as his first book and later acknowledged Matsuo Bashō as a ‘great companion’ and a contributing factor in the elaboration of the theory-practice he invented and named Geopoetics, more and more seen as of the highest relevance in the current world context.
Publisher’s presentation
Extract
Foreword
The prime motive of my life has always been to find a path out of pathology and entries into enlightenment.
Among the paths, the haiku path.
Haiku as an indicator to the uttermost outerground.
Over the long years, I’ve written quite a few haiku. Old Master Bashô said that if you make it to five really good ones, you can consider you haven’t wasted your life.
I’ve also written quite a few texts on haiku, in order to define exactly what a “good one” means.
In this little volume, I’ve gathered together a collection of texts and a handful of poems. Rearranging here, adding there, shortening elsewhere.
I’ve wanted the book to be much more than a compendium: a composition in its own right, with an autonomous existence.
Which is why I provide no sources, supply no dates with regard to my various published books. The texts are as they are. Here and now. Whatever the here, whatever the now.
KW
The Atlantic Studio
North Coast Brittany
April 2021