The essay by Donovan Hohn in the April Harper's (www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/page/0059, but you must register to get into the website -- it's worth it!-- or better yet, buy a copy!) should be read by everybody interested in American haiku culture. Many haiku writers will of course deny that their poetry has any thing to do with the culture Hohn's memoir is about. That's a pity because in most cases such a refusal is just another way of marginalizing oneself as a poet, a failure to see oneself as part of a cultural moment (one may of course consciously resist the prevailing culture but one must be articulate in that culture to resist it successfully)--another trick of the prevailing default narcissism. Anyway: "We were 'forest Christians,' " he writes, "followers of that American brand of pantheism founded by Henry David Thoreau and John Muir." In the 90s, Hohn was deeply involved in identity politics; his readers will themselves identify, however fleetingly, with his case. As an essay-memoir, "Falling" is exemplary. Haiku, as currently understood, is a kind of creative non-fiction; it needs to be re-understood, but it's best to start with the givens.
