Book of the Week: Mount Gassan’s Slope: Haiku, Senryu and Sumi-e by Ann Newell

A reviewer of Mount Gassan’s Slope wrote that “In this world of too many words, too many images, too many voices, Ann Newell offers us her sparse, deliberate haiku and powerful sumi-e drawings. How do so few words, so few images, cut so cleanly to the essence of all that living is and means?”

The Japanese term “sumi” means “black ink”, “e” means “painting”. It indicates one of the art forms in which subjects are painted with black ink. In the book, Ann writes that “sumi-e, like haiku: its inspiration, the happening, is so varied, is so fast, it defies rules. In the practice I saw something spontaneous, something direct and fresh in its lack of restraint, a certain moving spirit coming from the brush stroke.”

fencing off his yard
my neighbor’s plum tree
blossoms on my side

on the desert
dried skull
splits the moon

outside the missile range
an old tree dropping walnuts
on a tin roof

losing things
day after day
my journey gets lighter

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 2016 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.