Haiku Stairs Haiku Stairs The Haikū Stairs, also known as the Stairway to Heaven or Haikū Ladder, is a steep hiking trail on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The total 3,922 steps span along Oahu's Ko'olau mountain range. "Haiku" does not refer to the Japanese poetry genre. The area is named "Haikū" after the Kahili flower. In 1942, contractors for the U.S. Navy began construction of the Haʻikū Radio Station, a top secret facility that was to be used to transmit radio signals to Navy ships that were then operating throughout the Pacific. In order to obtain the necessary height for the
Haiku theoretician F. S. Flint, who passed on Couchoud's ideas to other members of the proto-Imagist Poets' Club such as Ezra Pound. Amy Lowell made a trip to London to meet Pound and find out about haiku. She returned to the United States where she worked to interest others in this "new" form. Haiku subsequently had a considerable influence on Imagists in the 1910s, notably Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" of 1913, but, notwithstanding several efforts by Yone Noguchi to explain "the hokku spirit", there was as yet little understanding of the form and its history. R. H. Blyth