Book of the Week – The Wonder Code by Scott Mason
According to The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Distinguished Books Award: “In The Wonder Code, author Scott Mason reflects upon the basic elements of haiku and with diligence and intelligence extends ‘[t]he unwavering gaze of haiku poetry’ into contemporary life. The book is not only a substantial introduction to haiku as literature but a jolt (delivered with exuberance and élan) toward life-changing discovery and ‘seeing the world with new eyes.’
There is not only a lover of poetry at work here but an accomplished and informed life-coach who has discovered in haiku something necessary to encourage and promote purely in the interests of self-realization and personal development.
While Mason is careful not to cut contemporary haiku free from its historical moorings in Japanese culture, the book does successfully map its affinities and course through dozens of other influences, mostly Western, demonstrating the why and wherefore of its universal (and ever-growing) appeal. The unfolding of the book’s five chapters, each focused on a single theme and accompanied by a gallery of poems from the haiku journal The Heron’s Nest, is refreshing, powerful, and illuminating.
For its contribution to appreciating and understanding haiku, we think The Wonder Code is a good bet to stand the test of time and take a special place beside titles by Blyth, Henderson, and Higginson.”
The Wonder Code was published by Girasole Press in 2017. If you would like more information, please visit www.thewondercode.com.
Following are selected poems from the book:
tea house
a small leaf
blackens a tooth
РAndr̩ Surridge, pg. 26
—–
humid day –
dog drool
down the window
– George Dorsty, pg. 69
—–
summer rain –
her kimono tied
loosely
– Sanda Simpson, pg. 135
—–
field of dandelions
thousands of wishes
go unused
– Adelaide B Shaw, pg. 185
—–
low winter moon
just beyond the reach
of my chopsticks
– Fay Aoyagi, pg. 252
—–
casting off …
a dock splinter
under my nail
– Scott Mason, pg. 292
—–
epochs in the making
the box canyon’s
sudden chill
– Scott Mason, pg. 298
—–
zen garden
the furrows disappear
from her brow
– Scott Mason, pg. 317
You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library and please share your favorite poem from the book with us.
Do you have a chapbook published in 2018 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 Kenneth Pearson and are used with permission.
Comments (2)
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Thanks Kenneth, and to Scott for making available this excellent book with so many fine haiku in it.
Every poet new to haiku should have a copy of this book . . . and it wouldn’t do some of us older farts any harm to read it too.