Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/58

46 and a climax, or any such requirement. But when the art of properly fitting the verses was lost, linked-verse dropped immediately to what it had been at its inception, a parlour game, and as such was abandoned by the important Japanese poets. Such men as Issa (1763–1828) preferred to devote their energies to the haiku, which became and has remained the favourite poetic form of the Japanese people.

It was the haiku also which first attracted the attention of Western poets, particularly those of the imagist school. Almost all the poets represented in the first imagist anthology were fascinated by the miniature Japanese verses with their sharp evocative images, and some composed imitations. Richard Aldington tells how

Slim volumes with such revealing titles as Pictures of the Floating World and Japanese Prints indicate how congenial these poets found the haiku, and, although the main thesis of this school, that poetic ideas are best expressed by the rendering of concrete images rather than by comments, need not have been learned from Japanese poetry, it is hard to think of any other poetic literature which so completely incarnates this view.