Poet Profile

Robert Epstein

I am a licensed clinical psychologist who practices psychotherapy in the San Francisco Bay Area. I came to haiku via a longtime interest in Eastern philosophy, aided especially by Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki. In addition, I have greatly appreciated the scholarly works and inspiration of R. H. Blyth. Since the early 1990s, after taking a class with Carolyn Talmadge, I have been writing haiku and senryu in earnest. Being chronically ill, my attention span is limited to the span of a haiku moment of which I have found many. I am deeply grateful for the Way of Haiku.

Books Published: The Breath of Surrender: A Collection of Recovery-Oriented Haiku (The MET Press, 2009); a clear view of [pinch book] (tribe press, 2003)

Zen garden
nothing
stands out

long July afternoon
at the railroad crossing
the train goes on and on

each swig
of the bottled water
the sky

fog
lifted
me

spring breeze
the dried flowers rustle
on the window sill

back from vacation
I let traces of sand
remain in the car trunk

Credits: "Zen garden" – Flower from Another Country (Haiku Society of America Members' Anthology, ed. Wanda Cook and Linda Porter, 2007); "each swig" - Pegging the Wind: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku (Winchester, VA: Red moon Press, ed. Jim Kacian, et al., 2009); "spring breeze" – Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, William J. Higginson (Tokyo, Kodansha, 1996); "long July afternoon" – The Haiku Anthology [expanded edition], ed. Cor van den Heuvel (New York: Norton, 1999); "fog" – Acorn 23 (2009); "back from vacation" – The Haiku Anthology [expanded edition], ed. Cor van den Heuvel (New York: Norton, 1999)