Book of the Week: a mouse pours out

Lee Gurga was Robert Spiess’s successor as editor of Modern Haiku and president of The Haiku Society of America, among his many contributions to the genre, but he is best known as a poet. This earliest of his chapbooks (High/Coo Press, 1988), though modest, is in some ways still his most satisfying collection, the poems accompanied by charming drawings by his sons A.J. and Alex, and a moving nostalgia for a more rooted life maintained throughout. (You may wish to check out Bill Ramsey’s R’r essay, “From R. H. Blyth to Richard Gilbert:The Postmodern Turn from Essence,” which has a useful commentary (p. 44) on the title poem of this chapbook.)

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

Do you have a chapbook published 2009 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 Jim Kacian, following a concept first explored by Tom Clausen, and are used with permission.

trying the old pump a mouse pours out

summer rain . . .
her water breaks
                    the day

as the light fails—
still hammering
from the treehouse

walking the corn—
the thornless scent
of woodroses

the smell of the iron
as I come down the stairs
winter evening

two boys the last pile of dirty snow