Book of the Week – the anabasis of man by Michael O’Brien

the anabasis of man by Michael O’Brien is a collection of parallel haiku that move restlessly between philosophy, theology, absurdity, and everyday debris. Published by Yavanika Press in 2018, the book explores freedom, fate, belief, and identity through juxtaposition rather than argument.

O’Brien works in the “parallel haiku” form, placing two short poems in proximity so that a third resonance arises in the reader’s mind. Early in the collection, we encounter:

absent itch
the darkness
of the hunt

alongside

waxwork dummy
an acorn’s dream
becomes a door

The first gestures toward instinct and pursuit; the second toward transformation and latent destiny. The acorn, discussed later in the author’s notes as a metaphor for biological fate, becomes emblematic of the book’s larger question: How much of what we become is already written?

The poems frequently collide high philosophy with mundane detail. Consider:

cherry blossom
throwing out
the suicide note

Beauty interrupts despair without resolving it. The note is discarded, but the reason is unstated. Later, the surreal shifts toward social commentary:

neatly lodged
in the hedgerow
last night’s takeaway

The image is both comic and accusatory. Litter becomes a kind of contemporary fossil.

Midway through the book, pause and ask yourself if these poems are absurd, humorous, tragic, or all three at once? O’Brien invites this instability. In one pairing, we find:

dregs of a pint
a thought of Kant
mixing mustard

The collision of pub residue and German philosophy undercuts solemnity. Thought does not occur in isolation; it happens in kitchens, bars, and sheds.

Religious imagery surfaces throughout, but rarely reverently. In:

chocolate moustache
my favourite Jesus is
willem dafoe

the sacred is filtered through cinema and childhood memory. Later, ancestral guilt becomes a technological reflection:

dead fish
a low sun reflects
off a tv antenna

The antenna glints like a crossbeam, but the medium is modern. Faith shifts from church to screen.

O’Brien’s author’s notes clarify that freedom, fate, absurdity, and humour underpin the collection. He invokes Camus, polytheism, and childhood theology, insisting that laughter belongs beside melancholy. The poems mirror that claim where suicide notes and cherry blossoms coexist; Kant and mustard share a line.

The final effect is not resolution but motion. “Anabasis” implies ascent or journey inland. Here, the ascent is psychological. The poems map a mind wrestling with inherited belief, contemporary culture, and the strangeness of being alive in both.

the anabasis of man does not offer answers. It offers collisions and trusts the reader to build the bridge between them.

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library. As you explore it, notice which pairings create a third poem in your mind.

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Do you have a full-length or chapbook-length book published in 2021 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 the THF Digital Librarian, Vidya Premkumar and are used with permission.