Book of the Week: Shadows’ Children

Martin Shea wrote, in the 1970s, some of the most powerful and unpredictable haiku in English, and so it’s worth our while to see what he’s been up to in later years. Shadows’ Children I (Lembeth Hall, 2011) is the first of a series of his most recent work in haiku, and though it has some odd presentation qualities (it employs a font that is all caps, for instance, as well as bold) the work is nevertheless striking and unique.

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

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Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by THF president THF president Jim Kacian, and are used with permission.

all the footprints
filling the wet sand —
filling with it
a low granite sky —
it tears
their overcoats
on the bottom
in their dark
the crab trap slowly closes