By TOM MAYO / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

In this month of April – National Poetry Month – consider the lowly haiku. A favorite of schoolchildren for its simple rules – three lines of five, seven and five syllables, respectively – the haiku form not only feels like a game but probably originated as one. The ancient haiku writer tossed off an initial three lines ("haiku" sometimes translates as "beginning-verse" in Japanese) and the next poet would expand upon them.

By the time we become adults, many of us put haiku behind us. Two of my favorite reference works (those by Helen Vendler and by Strand and Boland) do not mention haiku at all, as if to say, "Put down your child's games and come to the table to learn about real poetry." Then a supremely odd but wonderful rebirth occurred.

A consuming passion

Richard Wright (1902-1960), author of Native Son and Black Boy , was a compulsive composer of haiku who wrote more than 4,000 of them in the final two years of his life. Wright chose 817 for publication, but they did not appear in collected form until the 1998 edition of Haiku: This Other World (Arcade, $23.50).

Many of his traditional, imagistic haiku reveal a modern, even urban, sensibility. For example: A wailing siren/Scales up sheer skyscraper walls/In a blinding sun (#291). Other distinctly American poets have experimented with haiku – William Carlos Williams, Hayden Carruth, and Gary Snyder come to mind – but Wright's perspective and voice and sheer persistence may be unmatched this side of the Pacific.

A year after Wright's haiku were published came the third edition of The Haiku Anthology, edited by Cor van den Heuvel (W.W. Norton, $15.95 paperback). These 850 English-language haiku by 89 American masters illustrate Alan Watts' definition of haiku as "the wordless poem," which to the editor suggests the "invisibility" of haiku: "We as readers look right through them. There is nothing between us and the moment."

The beat goes on

And an edition of Jack Kerouac's Western haiku appeared last year. The poems in Book of Haikus, edited by Regina Weinreich (Penguin, $13 paperback) experiment with the form but leave the reader in no doubt that haiku is happening.

Former Poet Laureate Robert Hass built his considerable reputation in large part upon his translations of ancient Japanese haiku masters such as Basho, Buson and Issa. One hundred of his translations, combined with generous translator's notes, are on display in The Essential Haiku (Ecco, $16 paperback). Mr. Hass' versions are matchless for their idiomatic clarity.

Another collection, an intriguing combination of ancient masters and modern practitioners, is Classic Haiku: A Master's Collection, translated by Yuzuru Miura (Tuttle Publishing, $14.95 paperback), which was reissued in 2001.

Images and pictures

Finally, two books should not be missed by any fan. Haiku: The Poetry of Nature, edited by David Cobb (Universe Publishing, $18.95), combines 70 poems (in Japanese and English translation) with gorgeous color plates from the British Museum's collection of Japanese art.

And for instruction in writing haiku, I am grateful to a friend – a Buddhist monk and Yale-trained pediatrician – for this suggestion: Seeds From a Birch Tree, by Clark Strand (Hyperion, $19.95). Even for the nonwriting reader of haiku, Mr. Strand proves himself an indispensable guide through the contradictions and enticements of these tiny marvels.

Tom Mayo teaches "Law, Literature & Medicine" at Southern Methodist University and at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas.