Some Quotes on Japanese Poetry

"People say the tanka form [of poetry] is inconvenient because it's so short.  I think its shortness is precisely what makes it convenient...We are constantly being subjected to so many sensations, coming from both inside and outside ourselves, that we forget them soon after they occur, or even if we remember them for a little while, we end up by never once in our whole lifetimes ever expressing them because there is not enough content to sustain the thought...Although a sensation may only last a second, it is a second that will never return again.  I refuse to let such moments slip by."

Ishikawa Takuboku 1886-1912

"Thus haiku has something in common with painting, in the representation of the object alone, without comment, never presented to be other than what it is, but not represented completely as it is.  For if the haiku poet moves us by presenting rather than describing objects, he does so by presenting the particulars in which the emotional powers of the things or scenes reside.  And from these particulars comes the significance and the importance of his particular haiku.  He renders in a few epithets what he experiences, so that imagination will fill those spaces with all the details in which the experiential value of the images reside.  He does not give us meaning; he gives us the concrete objects which have meaning, because he has so experienced them."

Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History, 1957

"The seeds of Japanese poetry lie in the human heart and grow into leaves of ten thousand words.  Many things happen to the people of this world, and all that they think and feel is given expression in description of things they see and hear.  When we hear the warbling of the mountain thrush in the blossoms or the voice of the frog in the water, we know every living being has its song.  It is poetry which, without effort, moves heaven and earth, stirs the feelings of the invisible gods and spirits, smooths the relations of men and women, and calms the hearts of fierce warriors."

Ki no Tsurayuki,  Introduction to the Kokin Wakashu, 905