The Japanese Haiku Quotes

“Consequently, to form the experience, the length of the line for a haiku thought must have the same length as the duration of the single event of “ah-ness,” which is a breath’s length, even as Igarashi has pointed out.15 Consequently, the length of a verse is made up of those words which we can utter during one breath. The length, that is, is necessitated by haiku nature and by the physical impossibility of pronouncing an unlimited number of syllables in a given breath.”
― Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History

“we are justifying poetry by ‘proving’ that it is something else, just as, I believe, we have justified religion with the discovery that it is science.”4”
― Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History

“This book by Dr. Yasuda, while ostensibly about haiku, in reality penetrates deeply into the totality of this living spirit of Japan. It deals with those aspects which have produced and maintained haiku into the present day. The important key to understanding comes with the realization that in Japanese art one strives always for the absolute. Of the absolute there is no question of degree; it is either attained or lost. Most often, to be sure, it is not attained, but it is the constant striving toward and awareness of that high goal which gives strength and vitality to this living aesthetic spirit which has so impressed me in Japan.

(Robert B. Hall, Foreword, p. x)”
― Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English

“haiku moment: that moment of absolute intensity when the poet’s grasp of his intuition is complete, so that the image lives its own life. Such”
― Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History

“Pound thought better than he practiced in this particular instance, for his Metro poem was supposedly a pure example of what he meant by Vorticism: “The image is not an idea. It is a radiant node or cluster; it is what I can, and must perforce call a vortex; from which and through which and into which ideas are constantly rushing. It is as true for the painting and the sculpture as it is for poetry.”
― Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History