Book-of-the-Week

Book of the Week: Handful of Sand

forrester_handfulofsandcoverStanford M. Forrester has (since 1999) published and edited bottle rockets, a consistently gentle journal of haiku. For this same period and longer he has been one of our most consistent voices, in that same gentle and often lightly humorous vein tinged with melancholy. This early chapbook is an excellent introduction to this work, as well as this sensibility (bottle rockets press, 2001).

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.


the sea
in one swallow—
the jellyfish


summer evening . . .
fanning myself
with a paper moon


blue popsicles—
the children
compare tongues


end of autumn—
finding myself
in a field of thistle


winter deepens—
so much lint
in my bellybutton


telephone wire—
the starlings leave
one by one

This Post Has 7 Comments

  2. Several years ago Stan and I met for the first time and took a long walk through a wood here on Cape Cod. Aside from a superb time in general, Stan is a modest soul while being passionate about the potency and influence of words. He is, as well, a traveler, absorbing and reflecting many points of view, which are expressed in his short-form work, which radiate from one of his passions, the journal “bottle rockets.” Much respect and his friend…old pajamas

  5. Just great. But I still love JANUARY SUN the best. I’d encourage anyone interested in haiku to read any or all of Stan Forrester.

    –Peter

  7. An excellent collection. Always a thrill to read Stanford’s haiku. This is the only one of his books I don’t have. Stan, re-release it so I can buy a copy!

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