Book-of-the-Week

Book of the Week: Seventeen Grains of Sand

markoff_seventeengrainsofsandcoverSol Markoff came to haiku through his interest in Japanese arts, and especially painting. He studied with Minoru Kawabata in New York City in the 1970s, and in this volume (Haiku Moments, 1976) fuses his Eastern inclinations with his Western realities. The result is interestingly typical of the times, a time just before the momentum of the haiku movement would take the genre in a different direction.

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.


Steel Tree
On this treeless Street
Atop a roof antenna
A bird builds a nest.


Painful Flower
Powerful poppy!
Breaking through the stoned sidewalk
To bloom in the cracks.


Double Feature
In the movie house
Lovers embrace each other
On the screen and off.


Feminist
When that old rooster
Was too weak to crow, the hen
Awakened the sun.


Reconnaisance
Frightened by a sound,
I stopped and sent my shadow
To meet the echo.


Feelings
Walking in the park
I picked some flowers; felt them
Dying in my hands.

Back To Top