Jack Kerouac as a Haiku Poet

Abstract

Widely known as a prose writer, Jack Kerouac became famous with the publication of On the Road. However, the fact that Kerouac composed haiku is not widely known to the public as well as to the critics. In fact, there are mixed reputation on Kerouac’s composition of haiku. Lawrence Ferlinghetti evaluated Kerouac as a better novelist, “a better novel writer than a poem writer” (qtd. in Hakutani, 156). On the other hand, Garton-Gundling argues that the studies such as Beat Buddhism enabled American freedom to evolve, compete and coexist through this kind of cross-cultural philosophy. Grown up in a devout Catholic family and also affected by Eastern religion, he mixed those two influences into his haiku. It becomes Kerouac’s composition of haiku leads to the binary opposition. However, this kind of hybrid genre offered a different insight to the Beat generation. This paper, will explore how Kerouac created an American haiku movement, why Kerouac specifically named “American haiku”, the relationship between Kerouac’s haiku and religion, eventually see what the significance of Kerouac’s haiku is.