Book of the Week: Bells Are Calling

Jack de Vidas makes an argument that haiku is a universal art: though he is an Aussie, aside from a few place names, the reader could easily suspect him as being from anywhere Anglophone. It’s easy to see this from both sides—an ability to communicate the world round, but a lack of local inspiriting that makes poetry distinctive. Not to say you won’t find much to admire here, as de Vidas makes excellent work of this, his only haiku collection (paper wasp, 1996).

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

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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.

The bells are calling
the faithful to prayer,
and unbelievers too.

I wear round my neck
a rainbow coloured scarf
to keep away floods.

Blossoms ripen.
We paint them on rice paper
and wait for the plums.

Nearer,
the blue hills
are green.

Standing tall
the rest of my body
straightens out.

A shot
of morphia
Shantih     Shantih