Book of the Week: Winter Touch

John Ower came to haiku late in his writing career, one in which he published long poems and literary articles, along with teaching English at the university level. As with many such writers, he was attracted to haiku by its sensibility, its (seemingly unironic) acceptance of the world as it is, its association with austerity and beauty. These are the characteristics he strove to place in these, his most straightforward poems (Hub Editions, 2001).

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

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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.

cancer
scare—
my
garden
beds
with
weeds
as
tall
as me

on the bagel—
crimson poppies
lost

  April blue—
     a crow
serrates its wing

          sanity—
      this dripping,
this rippled stalagmite

our spindly shadows
    on the snow—
 shortest winter day

flashback to blossoms
         as I taste
      an acid plum