Nick Virgilio: A Haiku Poet for our Time
By Emma Rawley
If you’re like most people, then haiku is not something you’re familiar with beyond high school English class. The form itself isn’t very complicated: only three lines with 17 syllables and no set meter or rhyme scheme. Though they are not as complex as Shakespeare’s sonnets or Milton’s Paradise Lost, these short poems can have a lot of depth in skilled hands.
Nick Virgilio, am American haiku poet from Camden, N.J., worked magic with haiku. He published his first haiku in 1963 and continued his career by exploring beyond the limitations of the classic Japanese 5-7-5 syllable pattern. His style is reminiscent of imagists like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams who were in vogue just a few decades earlier. His poems capture the essence of everyday America in moments of happiness, sorrow and melancholy.
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