Kerouac, Jack

9 leaves (various formats) comprising 37 haikus and numerous drawings on cats and feline personality. Blue and black ink.
[With]:
- Larry Smith. Photograph of Jacques Kerouac and Stanley Twardowicz. 1964. Modern printing. 
- Stanley Twardowicz. Untitled drawing - portrait of Kerouac. Signed and dated: "S. Twardowicz. 64". Ink on craft paper. 

Stanley Twardowicz; Sotheby's NY, June 18, 1987, lot 101. 

Jack Kerouac, The Scattered poems. San Francisco, City Lights Books, 2001. p. 69. 

Unpublished cat haïkus by Kerouac.

On the back of the photograph, Stanley Twardowicz explains the origin of these haïkus 
"(...) In 1963, Jack Kerouac (...) Larry Smith and his wife Tsuneko, artist Matsumi Kanemitsu (...) and I had a party. (...) During the evening, Matsumi mentioned to Jack that he was doing a book of drawings on cats and suggested to Jack to write some Haïkus to be included in the book. Jack was excited about the idea and asked me for pen and paper and spent the rest of the evening writing haïkus, doing drawings of cats and of me and friends."

Kerouac discovered haiku when he began studying Buddhism through his friend and Zen poet Gary Snyder. Just as he reformed ideas about prose with his "spontaneous writing" method, he also reformed the way that haiku was thought about. He rejected the strict, traditional 17 syllable Japanese form, but kept the three short line form. He even developed his own theory about Western Haikus in The Scattered Poems: "The "haiku" was invented and developed over hundreds of years in Japan to be a complete poem in seventeen syllables and to pack in a whole vision of life in three short lines. A "Western Haiku" need not concern itself with the seventeen syllables since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabic Japanese. I propose that the "Western Haiku" simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella."

The present lot exhibits the "spontaneous prosody" one would expect from Kerouac over the course of a long evening's beer drinking, but he does capture at least some of the feline mystique: