9-4-12: The Haiku of Richard Wright

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Shabazz-0904.mp3

You may know Native Son, one of the great American novels of the 20th Century. You may not know—we certainly didn’t—that the Mississippi-born author of Native Son, Richard Wright, spent the last year and a half of his life feverishly studying and writing…haiku.

We learned about Wright’s haiku from Baltimore writer Baari Shabazz three years ago. We had just interviewed Shabazz about "Writing Outside the Fence," a writing workshop for ex-offenders, and he told us about the haiku on his way out the door.

Richard Wright was born on this date in 1908. Baari Shabazz returns to our show to tell Sheilah more about Wright’s haiku.

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Shabazz on the duality of nature in Wright's haiku

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Shabazz on what he finds most compelling in Wright's haiku