Book of the Week: White Rose, Red Rose: Haiku by Johnny Baranski and David H. Rosen

White roses and red roses are symbols of nonviolent resistance and freedom. With these forty short poems Johnny Baranski and David Rosen arrange a bouquet of hope. While our world is under threat of so many dangers, nuclear weapons, terrorism, racial division, and climate change to mention just a few, it is their belief that the language of flowers will prevail.

In the Preface, Johnny writes – “This little book of forty haiku, twenty each by David Rosen and myself, is about freedom, improvisation, like jazz riffs between sax and trumpet.”

short timers
in the prison yard
mayflies

sitting in the rain
waiting for the train
to nowhere

unicorns and dragons
take to the sky
kite festival

angels have descended
upon the earth
first snow

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 2017 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 THF Digital Librarian Dan Campbell and are used with permission.