Richard Wright turned to Japanese haiku in his final years

Evidence

Although Wright had written little fiction in recent years, he had continued to write essays and polemics, and had also developed a love of Japanese haiku. Among his late works is a sequence of beautiful small poems about peach trees, snails, spring rain, storm clouds, snow, chickens that look smaller after being soaked by rain — and a tiny green cocklebur, caught in the curls of a black boy’s hair. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 942

Categorization

• FICTION: The image of the cocklebur caught in a black boy’s hair is a striking compression of Wright’s whole thematic world in a single haiku image — could seed a creative meditation on how exile reshapes concern.
• XREF: Wright’s turn to haiku as an exile in Paris evokes the general pattern of expatriate artists finding new forms — parallels e.g. the broader mid-century American-in-Paris scene.