Bookstories 40: An Even Dozen

Every book tells its story, but what of the other story, the story behind the book? Bookstories offers an opportunity to tell that story. If you have a story about a book or poem you would like to share, contact us and we’ll help you make it happen. Thanks for letting us know the rest of the story!

Twelve Haiku

Both personally and professionally, I have always been involved in and fascinated by the blues. Its regular structure represents the perimeter within which there is infinite freedom. I do not necessarily subscribe to any rules of structure when it comes to haiku, but I felt such freedom when choosing to limit my compositions to a given number of syllables, and the number of poems themselves to twelve. Twelve is the magical point where the imperfect yet infinite three is able to meet the more balanced and logical four. It is a place where the self makes sense, and I did choose to include a sense of self, again feeling free to break with tradition. In my compositions a blues theme is always a journey, and this book spans continents and seasons outward looking in yet never experiencing any pain or loss. The photography is possibly too detailed to represent, yet hopefully enough to evoke. As with every product of the soul, it ceases to live once it is outside of us, hence I see the limitations of what I have written. It nevertheless represents a trace and as such, in the spirit of haiku, it is a small thing but one of inestimable value in the present.

— Martin Esposito