Book of the Week: The Music of Tree Limbs

Marsh Cassady, who was born in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1926 and now lives in Mexico, has had a long, many-faceted career as author (of fifty-one books), actor, musician, painter, director, teacher, editor and publisher. As founders and editors of Los Hombres Press, he and his partner, Jim Hitchens, published novels, non-fiction, and haiku during the 80s and 90s. Their first publication, The Rise and Fall of Sparrows, edited by Alexis Rotella, was named best anthology of the year for 1990 by The Haiku Society of America. Cassady’s only haiku book publication, The Music of Tree Limbs, today’s Book of the Week, was published by Amelia Press in 1993 and won the Cicada Chapbook Award. His haiku and haiku sequences are strongly marked by nostalgic recollections of his upbringing in Pennsylvania coal country.

In darkness
the old man’s pipe
coming home

Beside the spring
new fern
hoofprints of a deer

Parched earth
a skinny dog guarding
the unpainted shack

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

Do you have a chapbook published 2010 or earlier you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details.

Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by THF Digital Librarian Garry Eaton, and are used with permission.