The question of the status of haiku in literature is ultimately a question of the status of the haiku poet as a human being. Does the haiku poet, by virtue of personal suffering and artistic engagement, illuminate the perplexities of life?
If the haiku poet keeps returning to Basho or Issa, perhaps it is because Basho and Issa come to mind when he reads the opening lines of "Asides on the Oboe" by Wallace Stevens:
The prologues are over. It is a question, now,
Of final belief. So, say that final belief
Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.
This haiku poet cannot but choose to keep reading Basho and Issa and the others (even some of his contemporaries who belong to that world, his world) and writing haiku in the spirit of their examples. Other possibilities -- and they do occur to him -- do not survive the edge of his need.
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