Book-of-the-Week

Book of the Week: Found Haiku

zheng_foundhaikuJianqing Zheng teaches university-level literature and specializes in the haiku of Richard Wright, so I can’t tell if this interesting experiment (Yazoo River Press, 2006) is a wild hair or part of a larger process. In any case, it’s quite unlike anything else — haiku extracted from Eudora Welty’s novel Delta Wedding (Harcourt, 1973).

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Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by Jim Kacian, and are used with permission.


   evening glow —
a song out of a window
   of a tall white house


   summer moonshine —
the dripping girl
   out of the river


   missing her dead husband —
a little kiss
   on the back of the neck


   a little light twinkling
far out on the river
   this starless night


   morning cool —
robins feed
   in the radius of the hose


   flat Delta —
most of the world is
   the blue sky

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Thank you. I am reading Eudora Welty’s letters from different edited books. Her descriptions of nature and creativity seem to flow from a contemplative soul, who loved and cared deeply, and worked so hard. I don’t know all her stories and novels, so far, though can imagine there are many poems in her prose.

    *

    There is a lot of encouragement in letters and memoirs by artists. Sometimes the years to complete a work, the inability to see one’s work and the invaluable help from an editor, the belief of a publisher . . . all can be seen when a collection that spans years of life is read now.

    *
    Ellen

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