Modern poetry and haiku
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Published version
Date
2021-07-08
Authors
Patterson, Anita
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
Patterson, A. (2021). Modern Poetry and Haiku. In M. Nowlin (Ed.), Richard Wright in Context (Literature in Context, pp. 293-304). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108773522.030
Abstract
Wright wrote and published poetry throughout his career, culminating in the remarkable collection of “projections in the haiku manner” which he composed in the last years of his life. This analysis contextualizes Wright’s late turn to haiku in relation to his larger body of work; his reading of scholarship on haiku and Japanese Buddhism; his involvement with the Partisan Review during the 1930s; his revisionary engagement with modernist poetry, including Ezra Pound’s haiku-inspired imagism as well as T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; and his affirmation of Emersonian pragmatism. I conclude by exploring the transmission of Wright’s legacy to contemporary African American poets such as Sonia Sanchez, whose liberating experiments with haiku have resulted in new expressive possibilities.
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This material has been published in "Richard Wright in Context" edited by M. Nowlin http://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773522.030. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. © 2021 Cambridge University Press.