Book of the Week: I Apologize in Advance for the Awful Things I’m Gonna Do by Danny Bland

Danny Bland is a musician, road manager and author based in Seattle.The Stranger has an excellent interview of Bland, The Sad, Dirty, Raw Haiku of Danny Bland, which discusses his approach to writing haiku.

From Dave Alvin’s foreword to this collection: “Danny’s deeply personal haiku are funny, serious, painful, and fearless. At times shocking, then abruptly, surprisingly tender, his poems constantly question accepted beliefs and attitudes, both society’s and his own. Like the classic blues singers, Danny is able to use a limited form to express the limitless.”

you are prone to poor
choices, dear, and I am pleased
to be among them

took out her stitches
with a steak knife at shoney’s
pretty as can be

I say stigmata
and you say stigmato, let’s
call the whole thing off

when the day is done
you light a cigarette, pick
spiders from my hair

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.