Book of the Week: Delta Sun: A Collection of Haiku by Jianqing Zheng

From the Delta Poetry Review – “Jianqing Zheng lives in the Mississippi Delta and has published poetry in journals including the Arkansas Review, Louisiana Literature, Mississippi Review and Poetry South. He is the editor of five scholarly books on Richard Wright, Sonia Sanchez, Gish Jen, Sterling Plumpp, and African American Haiku.

In the introduction, Jianqing writes – “Frankly, life in the flatland can be flat. For me, a creative way to make life a tad bit bumpy or lively or lovely is to haiku it with dawnlight, sunlight, and twilight so that it will become more sunbright, more sunsational, and more sunlicious. Included in this collection are 56 haiku and 30 photographs with a single topic on the Delta sun.” Other books by Jianqing in the digital library include: Found Haiku and The Porch.

against the muzzle
of a cannon
bloody sunset

high noon
a leaf spirals down
to its shadow

delta sun so hot for so long for the whole summertime

red sunrise
his bloodshot eyes
after night shift

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

Do you have a chapbook published in 2018 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.