Description
Book SynopsisLenard D. Moore and African American Haiku: Merging Traditions identifies Moore as a primary figure in the American Haiku Movement as well as a significant contributor to the field of African American haiku. Ce Rosenow analyzes the ways in which Moore combines haiku with a variety of other traditions: African American storytelling, jazz poetry, ekphrasis, and elegies. An examination of Moore’s haibun, a Japanese form combining prose and haiku, reveals the further development of the African American aesthetic created in his individual poems. Ultimately, the author argues that Moore’s decades-long engagement with haiku and his prolific publication history solidify haiku as an established form in African American poetry.
Trade ReviewCe Rosenow’s Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku: Merging Traditions is the first scholarly book dedicated solely to the study of Lenard D. Moore, a prolific and gifted poet well-known especially in contemporary English haiku world. It offers the focused examination of Moore’s use of haiku techniques as well as his artistic attitude toward nature and human nature. This remarkable book explores how Moore develops different aspects of his experiences into expressions in the forms of jazzku, bluesku, gospelku, ekphrastic and elegiac haiku, haibun, and sequences, recognizes his importance in presenting aesthetics, history, and southern culture to expand our understanding of African American traditions, and sheds light for the future investigations of Moore’s work.
-- John Zheng, Mississippi Valley State University
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Acknowledgments
Credits
Introduction
Chapter One: Communal Narratives in Haiku Sequences
Chapter Two: Jazz Poems, Jazz Haiku, and Jazzku
Chapter Three: Ekphrastic Haiku
Chapter Four: Elegiac Haiku
Chapter Five: Haibun and an African American Aesthetic
References
About the Author
