Book of the Week: Cranes Arise: A Collection of Haiku by Native American Poet Gerald Vizenor

From the Poetry Foundation, we learn that Gerald is of Anishinabe heritage and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. He is the author of more than 30 books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry and attended college on the GI Bill after serving in the armed forces. He studied at New York University and did postgraduate work at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota.

Cranes Arise is a collection of haiku scenes presented with place names, the actual locations of the original images. The Introduction states that “these imagistic scenes are meditative, the traces of nature, and create a sense of seasonal presence.” Other books by Gerald in the Digital Library include Raising the Moon Vines and Two Wings: The Butterfly.

trickster moon
lingers behind a scarecrow
crown prince
– clear lake, minnesota

ocean storm
ravens ride the monterey pines
out of breath
– santa cruz, california

golden eagles
circle the great blue horses
prairie sunset
– rosebud, south dakota

fat green flies
square dance on the pink grapefruit
honor your partners
– ellsworth, wisconsin

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library and please share your favorite poem from the book in the Comments section.

Do you have a chapbook published in 2015 or earlier that 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 Dan Campbell and are used with permission.