Librarian’s Cache: The Life of Janice M. Bostok

White Heron: The Authorized Biography of Janice Bostok by Sharon Dean

This month I’d like to draw your attention to a recent addition to the digital library, White Heron: The Authorized Biography of Janice Bostok, by Sharon Dean. Though it was submitted to Griffin University as an academic thesis, Dean’s book does not read like the typical thesis. Over the course of a lengthy friendship with her subject, Dean had ample opportunity to become intimately acquainted with Bostok’s life, her past, her family and her single-minded pursuit of haiku as an art and a way of life. The result is a study that bristles with detail about Bostok’s unorthodox and unconventional search for balance and fulfillment amid exceptional, often heart-rending personal difficulties. Dean does a fine job too of finding the hidden connections between the art and the artist’s life. Highly recommended.

Sharon Dean has asked me to announce that her study of Bostok will soon be published in Australia in a revised form under the title The Incredible Vanishing Banana Poet.

Thank you.

Garry Eaton
THF Digital Librarian

Garry Eaton is the Digital Librarian for The Haiku Foundation. On the first Wednesday of each month he will highlight some part of the Foundation’s holdings.