Book of the Week: the window-washer's pail
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 unwindsin the hotel lobby the bare bulb of a floor lamp shines down on its distant basean empty wheelchair rolls in from the wavesthe shadow of the light chain swings slowlythrough the small holes in the mailbox sunlight on a blue stampthe windshield-wipers vanish over the horizon Geronimo leaps to his horsethe snow blows down the subway
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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
Both ” on a car bumper” & ” an empty wheelchair” roll into memory.
Early work from a haiku pioneer.
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
Fabulous!
Fifty years ago (I was a high school freshman) and still, to this day, a bar so high that we rarely reach it.
“an empty wheelchair, ” has always been a favorite of mine.
That was quick, that fast, the download is complete.
Thank for sharing!
How mysterious and haunting the ordinary can be… A true master haiku poet.
-Patrick