Book of the Week – wild again: Selected Haiku of Nina Wicker

wild again gathers the selected haiku of Nina Wicker, a North Carolina poet whose work is deeply rooted in the rural landscapes of her life. Edited by Lenard D. Moore, Dave Russo, and Jim Kacian, the collection spans decades of writing and reflects a sustained attentiveness to farms, woods, animals, graveyards, and seasons.

Wicker’s haiku are grounded, but never static. They move between work and worship, birth and burial, harvest and hunger. Early in the book, we encounter:

factory whistle
blue morning glories
on the flag pole

Industry and wildness share the same vertical space. The whistle implies labour; the morning glories climb upward anyway. The poem does not romanticise either element. It simply places them side by side.

Weather, too, reshapes the ordinary:

first drops of rain
the stray’s kittens scatter
into the woodpile

The movement is immediate and instinctive. Rain initiates dispersal. The poem captures vulnerability without commentary.

Mortality threads quietly through the collection. In:

December morning—
a pallbearer throws back
his pony tail

The gesture is almost casual, yet it carries the weight of ritual. The dash slows the reader, allowing the cold morning to settle before the physical motion arrives.

Midway through the book, pause and consider how Wicker balances tenderness and unsentimentality. Take:

from a darkened room
the cancer patient watches
the cereus bloom

The bloom happens outside the patient’s body, yet within sight. The poem resists metaphor. It neither equates blossom with hope nor denies it. It simply lets both exist in the same frame.

Wicker often aligns human ceremony with natural cycles. In:

after the flood—
acorns around the tombstone
sprouting

Destruction gives way to growth, but not triumphantly. The tombstone remains. The sprouting acorns do not erase loss; they grow beside it.

Throughout the collection, animals, crops, rivers, and tools are not background but co-inhabitants. In:

hog-killing time—
around the steaming vat
snow melts to red mud

season, labour, and blood meet without euphemism. The poem is stark yet precise.

The final poem returns to origin:

back at the home place
her tamed wild roses
wild again

Time circles back. What was cultivated reclaims its nature. The phrase “wild again” becomes both title and thesis: nothing remains entirely contained.

Nina Wicker’s haiku do not strain for epiphany. They trust the field, the weather, the body, and the ritual. They allow the world to be itself, sometimes harsh, often tender, always observed closely.

You can read the entire collection in the THF Digital Library. As you explore it, notice which landscapes feel most familiar-and which feel newly revealed.

Do you have a full or chapbook length book published in 2020 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, Vidya Premkumar and are used with permission.