Title: AJcKerOU1 AJcKerOU2
Instrumentation: alto, (countertenor), tenor, cello, slide-guitar, percussion
Duration: 9'45"
Command from: VOXabulaire, on Jack Keruac Book of Haikus
First performance: Le miroir de l’Instant, Samedi 9 février 2008, Auditorium de la Bibliothèque Louis Nucéra, Nice
VOXabulaire: Cecil Gallois, contre-ténor, Paolo Riccucci, ténor, Nicola Cattaneo, guitare, Silvia Lenzi, violoncelle, Luca Mezzadri, percussions
Year of composition: 2007
Property, publisher: author
Jack Kerouac
American Haiku. (Copyright 1959).
The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different I don't think American Haikus (short three-line poems intended to be completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again...bursting to pop.
Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella.
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1 Haiku! Haiku! Still wears a bandage Over his injured eye! 2 Drizzle - Midnight pine, I sit dry 3 Moon behind Black clouds - Silver seas 4 The dregs of my coffee Glisten In the morning light 5 "The wind agrees with me not the sun" - Washlines 6 The strumming of the trees reminded me Of immortal afternoon |
7 Rock rosed - behind the Casbah the sun has disappearing act 8 Smell of burning leaves, the quiet pool at evening In August 9 Greyhound bus, flowing all night, Virginia 10 Full moon in the trees - across the street, the jail 11 Forever and forever everything's alright - midnight woods 12 Why explain? bear burdens in silence |
Né au Xème siècle au Japon, le haïku est, dans sa forme classique, un poème en trois vers économes : cinq, sept et cinq syllabes, ou mesures. Forme brève, tout y est dit en quelques mots justes et simples, à peine exprimés, sitôt effacés.
Sa simplicité, son dépouillement, expriment la rondeur parfaite, miraculeuse ou drôle d’un instant, de minuscules illuminations où le poète coïncide totalement avec le mouvement de la vie : une pluie d’hiver, les cerisiers en fleurs, le chant du grillon… Le haïku se fait le miroir de l’instant.
from the premiere's program
Kerouac in his Paris Review interview of 1968, said “haiku is best reworked and revised. . . . It has to be completely economical, no foliage and flowers and language rhythm, it has to be a simple little picture in three little lines.”
In the very first paragraph of Doctor Sax Kerouac tells himself, and us, the way to get the details of this world into words:
Many of his best haiku appeared in the posthumous Scattered Poems (City Lights, 1971) and on a recording, Blues & Haikus, that he did in 1959 (he read his haiku interspersed with short solo jazz comments by saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims).
Quoting American haiku poet and critic Tom Lynch, she says Kerouac blended “melancholy with the world-weariness of blues tradition.”
“Above all,” he writes, “a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella.”
It contains a little over 200 haiku, and includes most, if not all, of the haiku used in Blues & Haikus and Scattered Poems.
from: Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac
Video of the first performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIh9P8ocvfY