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.' Jack
Kerouac. Renowned for his groundbreaking Beat Generation novel "On the Road", Ja
ck Kerouac was also a master of the haiku, the three-line, seventeen-syllable Ja
panese poetic form. Following in the tradition of Basho, Buson, Shiki, Issa, and
other poets, Kerouac experimented with this centuries-old genre, taking it beyo
nd strict syllable counts into what he believed was the form's essence.
