Book of the Week: the mood of earth

Ann Atwood was a photographer first and a poet second, but she was very keen to intertwine her two arts, and did so in a series of beautifully produced cloth-bound books in the early days of the haiku movement. the mood of earth (Charles Scribners Sons, 1971) is a good example of just how she worked, the images coming first and suggesting words that might extend them. Perhaps too telling for our later tastes, but groundbreaking in their time.

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 Jim Kacian, and are used with permission.

A blank page of sand —
at the water’s cutting edge
the pattern shaping.
Egrets on their way south —
The water left with
                              broken shadows
Trailing diamond  —
Through dripping branches
the woods and I are one
in the eyes of the rain.