in his haiku
living moments
still here

Their warmth and support was greatly appreciated by all and I am so very sad to hear of Bill’s passing. I send Penny a big hug and prayer for her and family.

It was a privilege to know Bill even briefly – he has left a valuable legacy for the rest of us.

We will be honouring Bill with haiku this evening at our Fall Kado meeting.

now a cuckoo’s song
carries the haiku master
right out of this world
- basho

bless,
Heather MacDonald

This is from William J. Higginson’s book The Haiku Handbook. How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku. McGraw-Hill 1985.

I have also used his Handbook. Learning myself, also taught others.

Here is my haiku for William J. Higginson; I don’t say who is this squirrel:

morning dew -
a squirrel found
an acorn

Michael, thank you for leaving us with such extensive recollections and observations. Yes, we take another step toward our maturity, grateful that giants leave deep footprints to follow.

I joined the Haiku Society of America back in 1988, and oversaw the publication, with much help from Bill and others, of The Haiku Path, which was a history of the society from its founding in 1968 to 1988 — the HSA’s first twenty years. The book was dedicated to Harold G. Henderson, who cofounded the society in 1968, and died in 1974, as I recall. I remember feeling while working on the book that I wish I had known Henderson and could have learned from him. Bill knew him of course. And now Bill has died, and recent and new members of the HSA will likely wish that they knew him in person as well as through his books. I’m proud to have known Bill, and I hope all of us who knew him can continue to pass on his legacy, just as Bill and others have passed on the legacy of Harold Henderson, R. H. Blyth, and others who have shown us the haiku path. Bill’s Haiku World is one haiku book that I reach for frequently, and no serious student of haiku deserves such a designation if they haven’t carefully read Bill’s Haiku Handbook. His other books and essays about haiku, renku, and related arts are seminal influences in English-language haiku, and we are all deeply in his debt.

And so haiku unfolds. We are in the generation where original English-language haiku pioneers and HSA charter members are still with us. But with Bill’s passing, we move a step closer to maturity. These are the pains of growing up.

A deep bow of thanks to Bill and everything he has done for haiku poetry, and for me personally. And another bow of thanks and love to his wife, Penny Harter.

Michael Dylan Welch

for William J. Higginson
with gratitude for his service to the haiku world and for The Haiku Handbook which opened the haiku door for me, and with blessings for his continuing journey . .

Bless,
hortensia

at the national arts club in manhattan.

this was after we read from the baseball haiku anthology.

told bill straight out, “if i hadn’t read the handbook, i wouldn’t be here.”

on that night, i met a true gentleman & scholar.

where we’ve been
& where we’re going…
driftwood

thank you bill,
ed markowski

until spring revival
your new world’s haiku

Such was the scope of Bill’s haiku lens, he recently spotted a write up of me and some of my haiku in the sports pages of an Australian newspaper, and felt compelled to alert one of my fellow Aussie haijin to it, who in turn alerted me to Bill’s favourable comments. What a thrill it was to know he had seen some of my poems.