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Book of the Week: nothing personal

gorman_nothingpersonalcover

LeRoy Gorman has published scores of haiku, most often in small chapbooks like this one (proof press, 2001). His piquant observations and verbal dexterity mark him as one of the best practitioners of the genre of our time.

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.



getting louder the calf the auctioneer
TV sex the ads multiply
moonlit zucchini rot on the vine Richard Brautigan is dead
acid rain the dog brings in its fleas
above the traffic a clock with no hands
the locked ward Oprah the only window

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. It’s ironic that Leroy Gorman references Brautigan in one of the haiku. Remember Brautigan’s Haiku Ambulance and other haikuesque poems?
    Gorman’s “getting louder”‘ is a precise portrait of life being life; “above the traffic ” could be a Zen koan.
    Thank you , Mr. Gorman.

  2. Gorman-san is so open to existence…how everything connects, …I see a unity of things in his work. Reading his haiku is like being inside a Hesse novel. My favorite:

    solar storms
    the dog chases
    its tail

    -Patrick

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