Richard Wright's Haiku Week #1

Let's talk about this book!

Hello, Poetry Lovers!

I started a chat for week one late Sunday night, but it seems people are having difficulty finding it. For some reason, I’m not able to link to it. This is all part of the learning process for this new project!

I thought I’d try using a regular post to see if that is more accessible for everyone.

Feel free to comment on this post anytime, even if you’re coming across it years from now. This is an asynchronous book club, after all.

Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon by Richard Wright was first published in 1998. Wright’s daughter Julia Wright spearheaded the effort to publish the haiku collection from a manuscript found among her father’s papers after he passed away in 1960. At the time of publication, the rights to his literary estate were still controlled by Richard Wright’s wife, Ellen. Ellen Wright’s name appears on the copyright records for this collection and Julia wrote the Introduction.

This week we read the Introduction, Editor’s Note, and pages 1-52 (haiku 1-208).