Haikus

Afrânio Peixoto first encountered haiku in 1906, on a study trip to Paris: their brevity, their sense of the fleeting, immediately reminded him of his beloved native Brazilian trova form. His first four haiku in 1919 were in fact in the preface to his anthology of 1,000 trova. In 1928, he revisited the form, suggesting that it was in essence “a lyrical epigram” and proposing that it should be “naturalised” to Brazilian poetry in the same way as had the Italian sonnet, French ballade, and Greek epigram. His half-serious tone was matched by having his own cycle of Brazilian haikus appearing simultaneously in slightly different forms in the first issue of a new popular monthly Excelsior, and the staid academic journal Revista. That he thought highly of them can be seen by their inclusion in his 1931 anthology, Miçangas. (First English translation)