1. Introduction for My SoulJourney in 17 Syllables
It is not easy to say what is happening in the field of American poetry, because
any description ultimately proves to be inadequate. In our age of technological
reproduction, poetry just grows. Indeed, the rapidity of growth might persuade some of
us that the act of poetry counts for more than the art of poetry in the twenty-first century.
To write or to speak is to resist the threat of dehumanizing silence. The voices of the
uncanonized celebrate the consciousness of being human. Whether it is oral or written,
poetry remains one of our best records of human presence.
Acknowledging that Richard Wright’s Haiku: This Other World (1998) is one
point of origin for My SoulJourney in 17 Syllables, S. Racquel places her work in a
tradition of questing for the forms and languages that might give some specificity to
racially marked experiences. Although black folk have no monopoly on the word “soul,”
their specialized uses of the work signal the indivisibility of the sacred and the secular.
Racquel indicates the nature of her persona’s journey by borrowing the sounds of
spiritual agons from the Old Testament (King James Version) as well as the sight/sound
connections available in the Japanese form of haiku. This blending is a clue about our
choices in following the organization of 895 haiku --- some adhering to the
combinatory features of the genre, and others using the rule of seventeen syllables to
create innovative American adaptations. The importance of organization must be
stressed, because the poet does want us to ride the subtle narrative ark in the
psychological currents of an individual’s daily experiences. Racquel makes art of the
commonplace, a daring enterprise that unmasks the artifice of poetry. The real poetry is

2. constituted in our attentive responses to what is so familiar that it takes on the colors of
strangeness, especially when the familiar is given to us by displacing the aesthetic which
is theoretically appropriate to haiku.
The performance enacted by My SoulJourney in 17 Syllables has interesting roots
in African American poetic tradition. It can be linked back to the poetry of Jupiter
Hammon (1711-1806?), particularly his use of biblical references to cast light on his
consciousness of secular experiences. Racquel, however, does more than merely direct
attention to carefully selected Old Testament complaints. She appropriates and
refashions the language of the Old Testament as instances of “found” haiku; the result
intensifies our awareness of religion’s pervasiveness in the daily operations of black folk
psychology. Just as Melvin Tolson’s Harlem Gallery (1965) signifies on the modernism
best represented by Ezra Pound, Racquel’s work conjures memory of Jack Kerouac’s
freewheeling experiments with haiku in The Dharma Bums (1958) and other works.
There is, one might claim, a shared American or multicultural rebelliousness in Kerouac’s
and Racquel’s recontextualizing the ways haiku establishes connections between the
human being and Nature. For Kerouac and Racquel seventeen syllables are opportunities
to turn three lines into snapshots of attitudes. The traditional concerns with time and
season, with the pleasure of beholding Nature are held in abeyance. Pictorial possibilities
of image are revitalized.
In contrast to using haiku to maximize discrete epiphanies, My SoulJourney in 17
Syllables is a contemporary instance of employing haiku to refresh the possibilities of
post-modern poetic narrative. This book challenges readers of poetry to test how capable
they are of navigating a river of contemporary uncertainty, of aesthetic engagement with

3. an act of innovation.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
Dillard University
April 24, 200