Book of the Week: Nature Morte

Haiku as social commentary: this innovative book appeared, without attribution, at Haiku North America in New York in 2003. It’s message has become only the more urgent in the decade that has followed.

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.

   Above the milkweed:
Sky & sun! Gossamer wings!
   Metamorphosis

  On the hot sidewalk
(victim of the skyscrapers)
   a dead meadowlark.

   Through the quiet dawn
a row’s harsh cry ricochets
   off the canyon walls.

   Beware all pigeons!
The peregrines build their nests
   up on Brooklyn Bridge.


   Wood shattering and
scattering birds fill the sky
   as the big tree falls.

   As fisherman’s proof,
lacquered and now with glass eyes,
   a great northern pike.