Book-of-the-Week

Book of the Week: the window-washer's pail

vandenheuvel_thewindowwasherspail

Cor van den Heuvel produced a series of innovative chapbooks from his own Chant Press, English-language haiku’s first body of individual work. This chapbook, from 1963, is perhaps the strongest of the group.

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.




on the car bumper
a long landscape
unwinds


in the hotel lobby
the bare bulb of a floor lamp
shines down on its distant base



an empty wheelchair
rolls
in from the waves


the shadow
of the light chain
swings     slowly



through the small holes
in the mailbox
sunlight on a blue stamp


the windshield-wipers
vanish over the horizon
Geronimo leaps to his horse



the snow
blows
down the subway

This Post Has 7 Comments

  1. and another from the book:

    dawn
    among rocks
    lights water

    Cor van den Heuvel

    From a 1963 book – how wonderful. Must have been so new then and new now . . .

    I’m following Darrell Lindsey’s example and catching up with some more reading here, though I am always interested to see the books and poets each week.

    Thanks, Ellen

  3. its a toss-up between ‘on a car bumper’ and ‘the windshield wipers’ for me. I enjoyed the whole book, but these two-Wow! I was a year from being born when this came out, it keeps you humble knowing your work is a part of so much talent in the world. Thank you for sharing this. June Rose Dowis

  5. Fifty years ago (I was a high school freshman) and still, to this day, a bar so high that we rarely reach it.

  6. “an empty wheelchair, ” has always been a favorite of mine.

    That was quick, that fast, the download is complete.

    Thank for sharing!

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