"Branches Without Roots" — But Full of Flowers

Upon his death at the age of 52 in Paris on Nov. 28, 1960, Richard Wright, author and subject of Black Boy, left a literary legacy of novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. Part of his poetic legacy is the haiku — a specialized form of Japanese poetry that consists of three lines with a 5-7-5 syllabic structure — more than 4,000 of which he wrote over the last 18 months of his life.
Haiku: This Other World is a collection of the 817 he most preferred. The book displays Wright's versatility with poetic form and is a call to scholars of African American culture. And in keeping with this particular form of art, the poetry emphasizes, among other things, beauty, changing seasons, oneness with nature, and the revelations that nature inspires. Take, for instance, "Haiku 446":

"Sleepy bumble bees
Buzzing about plum blossoms
In the setting sun"

Notable aspects of this poem are its reference to spring (plum blossoms), harmony between the bees and the blossoms, onomatopoeia (a poetic device in which a word represents the sound that it makes, such as the word "buzzing"), sibilance (repetition of the "s" sound, as in "sleepy" and "setting sun"), and alliteration (repetition of an initial consonant sound, as in "bumble bees" and "buzzing ... blossoms").
Analysis of this sort is necessary and is found in the "Notes" and "Afterword" of the book. But what is missing, however, is any discussion of Wright's poems in relation to works produced by other African American writers. For example, Wright's haiku on bees, plum blossoms, and the horizon beg comparison to the poetry of Jean Toomer. Toomer's 1923 effort, Cane, is a literary snapshot of prose and verse singing out the final days of a smal, rural African American community in Georgia.
Likewise, some of Wright's poems are also reminiscent of the opening pages of Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. In that novel, love and rebirth are represented by bees buzzing around a pear tree, and the horizon represents lead character Janie's connection with nature and self.
Haiku is presented as the literary final gasps of a poet. Wright's daughter, Julia, declares in the "Introduction" that the poems mourn the passing of his mother and announce his own impending death. Moreover, she says that the shortness of the lines "matched the shortness of his breath ... [and] enabled him to reach out to the Black boy part of himself still stranded in the South that continued to live in his dreams."
Wright's autobiographical "Haiku 647" was read by Julia at her father's funeral.