Book of the Week – Dewdrop World by Orrin PreJean

Dewdrop World by Orrin PreJean is a bold, contemporary senryu collection that holds vulnerability and irreverence in the same breath. Published in 2021, the book moves through sexuality, race, religion, loneliness, desire, and self-interrogation without softening its edges.

The title gestures toward Issa’s famous “dewdrop world,” yet PreJean’s vision is less resignation than confrontation. Early in the collection, we read:

arriving geese- what is this fascination i have with darkness

Nature does not console; it prompts introspection. The dash creates a hinge between outer migration and inner fixation. The darkness is not seasonal but psychological.

Elsewhere, sensuality and dissatisfaction coexist:

another weekend of unfulfilled lust and peony-rain

The softness of “peony-rain” contrasts with the bluntness of “unfulfilled lust.” The pairing reveals a pattern throughout the book: lyric surface, raw admission.

PreJean frequently collapses sacred and secular registers:

i wrap up Torah study stomach speaks hunger

Spiritual discipline and bodily need share equal weight. The poem does not elevate one over the other; it records simultaneity. Similarly, in:

rosary beads whats left of the bundt cake

devotion sits beside dessert. Ritual is embedded in appetite.

Midway through reading, pause and ask yourself if these poems feel confessional, performative, or defiant? In:

beautiful lives of gay men turning on the stove

domestic action becomes quiet resistance. The poem suggests that survival itself is an aesthetic act.

Political consciousness also surfaces sharply:

falling confederate monuments old wounds heal slowly

The enjambment underscores delay. Removal does not equal repair. The poem’s restraint strengthens its force.

PreJean’s language often bends toward surreal self-examination:

365 faces of a polyhedron- there’s so much of myself to understand

Identity is faceted, unstable. The mathematical image distances the emotional claim, allowing reflection without melodrama. Even humor carries ache:

bargain sale – ain’t got no man to spoil me

Colloquial voice and dash combine to stage irony. Desire is economic, romantic, and theatrical at once.

Throughout the book, lowercase “i” suggests both humility and fragmentation. The poems are brief, often single-breathed, yet they accumulate into a portrait of a speaker navigating queerness, faith, art, and longing in contemporary America.

Dewdrop World refuses tidy transcendence. Its dew is not evaporative enlightenment but condensation, what gathers when experience cools and settles. The world may be fleeting, but PreJean insists on naming what it contains.

You can read the entire collection in the THF Digital Library. As you explore it, notice which poems feel like confession and which feel like declaration.

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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.