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Haiku and Essays Exhibit


Haiku and Essays, Word Pictures of Moments in Time

Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry, brought to its current refined state in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the middle of the eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth century by the haiku Masters Basho, Buson, and Issa.

A haiku consists of only seventeen syllables contained in three lines of five, seven, and five. Each haiku should include a seasonal word to indicate what season of the year it takes place. They are normally about nature, but can also reflect a moment of human emotion, as with the following haiku about the destructive power of Hurricane Katrina.

Waves rushing onshore –
many memories are placed
at the old wrack line.

In Frank Smith’s exhibit, Haiku and Essays, Word Pictures of Moments in Time, he is attempting to illustrate how the process works for him.

The exhibit will open on March 30 at 6:30 p.m. Providing an introduction to the exhibit will be Howard Bahr, award-winning author of historical fiction and professor of English writing at Belhaven College in Jackson, Miss.
Frank Smith was born in Forrest County, Mississippi and is a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi. He served in the United States Army in the Intelligence Service and eventually retired through the Army National Guard. He has lived six years in Okinawa, Japan where he gained an interest in haiku and bonsai. He is retired from the railroad as a Freight Conductor and currently lives in Long Beach, Mississippi.
Click here to download a PDF flyer for the opening of this exhibit.