Book review: Missed Appointment, by Gary Hotham

Missed Appointment is a short collection of haiku by one of the masters of English-language haiku, Gary Hotham.  Published in 2007, the book features 15 of Hotham's poems in a pocket-sized chapbook format.

   over the parade---

   a window no one

   looks out of

In addition to the poems, the book also contains an introduction from the poet -- "The Amazing in Haiku."  It is a short, interesting essay about the attitudes of poets, including a quote from former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins about haiku.

The haiku and senryu are printed one to a page, in bold black type that serves to further emphasize the white space surrounding the poems in the minimalist haiku fashion.  The book has a cardstock cover featuring the art of Ogato Korin, "Detail of a Japanese Screen."

   farewell party---

   the sweetness of the cake

   hard to swallow

Hotham's haiku are varied in both subject and form, but his distinctly American style shows through in all of them.  Although this book only contains a small sampling of his work, it is obvious Hotham is very comfortable writing haiku, and he's not afraid to stretch its boundaries.

   the shortcut

   the schoolchildren take---

   a new layer of leaves matted into the old

Missed Appointment received an Honorable Mention in the Haiku Society of America's 2008 Mildred Kanterman Memorial Merit Book Awards.  Hotham is no stranger to this award -- his full-length collection of haiku, Breath Marks: Haiku to Read in the Dark (published by Canon Press) took first place in the competition in 2000.

Many of the poems from Missed Appointment have been previously published in various highly-esteemed haiku journals, some of which include The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, Presence, and Modern Haiku.  A few of the poems from this book were also selected for inclusion in The Haiku Anthology, a large paperback collection of poems representing the best in English-language haiku.

Missed Appointment is a 20-page chapbook, published by and available from Modest Proposal Chapbooks.  The book, #17 in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series, sells for a mere $3.00 (which includes shipping).  Any Hotham fan (or haiku fan in general) will find this book to be a welcome addition to their collection.

In addition to Missed Appointment, Hotham has published a number of chapbooks and mini-chapbooks, including Off and On Rain (from High/Coo, now known as Brooks Books) and Before All the Leaves are Gone and As Far as the Light Goes, both of which were published by Juniper Press.

Modest Proposal Chapbooks is run by Don Wentworth, editor of the small press journal Lilliput Review.  Both the chapbook series and the journal often feature haiku, senryu, and tanka.  Before Missed Appointment, Modest Proposal also published another collection of Hotham's haiku, titled Footprints and Fingerprints (#4 in the series).

(Originally published on Helium.com, July 2009)

Black Hare Press - Year Six anthology

Black Hare Press' Year Six anthology, filled with stories from the 2024 Dark Moments monthly prompts and BHP's Patreon site, is out now. I was honored to have a few of my drabbles included.

The collection includes over 200 stories, including four each by master storytellers Kai Delmas and Tracy Davidson. It also includes "Literal Potions" by Lisa H. Owens -- an amazing drabble with a great twist(ed) ending.

The nine-iron protruded from her ear like a grotesque appendage. Passersby tried not to stare, but no matter where they looked, something was off-kilter.

Order a copy of the book (paperback, hardcover, or ebook) here: https://books2read.com/BHP-Y6

Book review: Jolts, by Aurelio Rico Lopez III

The Japanese poets have been writing haiku for hundreds of years, and English-language haiku is comparatively new.  Even newer still (for the most part) is speculative haiku -- haiku that focuses on the speculative genres (fantasy, science fiction, and horror).

For such a new field, it is always impressive to find poets who write speculative haiku like they were born into it, and Aurelio Rico Lopez III is one such poet.  His speculative haiku (also called horrorku or scifaiku) have appeared in many genre magazines, both online and in print, including Static Movement, Scifaikuest, Niteblade, and Mirror Dance.

In Jolts, his recent chapbook, Lopez collects fifty of his haiku, presented three to a page, often with accompanying dark illustrations.  The poems range from the creepy

park playground

tinted van parked nearby

license plate missing

to the macabre

buzzing bone saw

maestro whistling

a happy tune

to the downright scary

fingers trembling

unable to dial

walls smeared with blood

and cover pretty much everything in between.  

Lopez is a fine speculative poet, whether writing in haiku, cinquain, or other forms.  His haiku flow easily, and he doesn't try to force them into the arbitrary 5-7-5 structure that many amateur haiku poets can't seem to let go of.  I only counted one poem in the book that fits the seventeen-syllable rule, and I doubt it was written that way intentionally.

Jolts is a collection of dark poems, most of which fall into the broad category of horror.  Some make use of popular genre tropes like zombies, vampires, and unnamed things with red eyes, while other poems unleash their own new monsters:

new fishing experience

lures in the water

shotguns at the ready   

Several of the poems hone in on a more realistic kind of terror, like the frightening madness of a car crash:

a screech of tires

hysterical mother

rolling doll head

In the following poem, Lopez aims for subtle, Utopian horror:

serial number

bundle of joy

custom-made for you

Jolts is Lopez's second book of horror haiku.  His first collection, Shocks, contained twice as many poems.

Jolts: A Horror-Ku Collection is a 27-page chapbook, printed on high-quality paper with a cardstock cover.  The cover image and interior black and white drawings were created by Honeylette Teodosio.  Jolts was published in November 2004 by Sam's Dot Publishing. Now that The Genre Mall is no more, it can be hard to find a copy of the book available online.

sun goes down

one world sleeps

another awakens

(Originally posted on Helium.com, 2009)

Book review: Pencil Flowers Jail Haiku, by Johnny Baranski

Johnny Baranski passed away in 2018.  He was an anti-war protester who saw his share of life behind prison bars.  In addition to his other stints in jail, he spent time at Lompoc Federal Prison in California for trespassing on a military base to protest a nuclear weapons system.  Dozens of protesters had scaled the barbed wire fence of the Navy base with him -- some were let off on probation, but Baranski and others got the maximum penalty of six months in prison.  Pencil Flowers: Jail Haiku is the result of that sentence.

Baranski was a widely-published poet; Pencil Flowers was his first chapbook.  It's a slim volume featuring 41 poems.  Almost all are haiku, and only one poem runs longer than a page.  The poems are spread out nicely and scattered on the pages like birdseed.

        Brought by the wind

   these tiny seeds have sprouted

        some big black crows.

Baranski's poems are not self-pitying laments, nor are they empty political poems.  Many of them are reminiscent of the work of the great Japanese poet Issa -- they have that special quality of noticing the good in life, even while suffering.

             Jail break

   but the guards do not notice me

             moon gazing.

The haiku in Pencil Flowers are rich in content, so much so that the reader does not pay much attention to form.  Baranski experiments with indents and spacing, as well as punctuation, but none of it takes away from the poems themselves.  (Unfortunately the formatting could not be preserved for the sample poems used here.)  The title poem is accompanied by a quick line-drawing sketch of tall flowers, which also appears on the chapbook's cover and is very Eastern in its use of white space.

An Eastern influence is apparent throughout the chapbook, and Baranski meshes it seamlessly with his own experiences:

       Fluttering in vain

   a butterfly with one wing

   where prison gates meet.

Pencil Flowers: Jail Haiku was published in 1983 by Holmgangers Press.  It is long out of print, but several libraries own copies, and those copies can usually be requested via an inter-library loan.  Used copies will occasionally show up on eBay or Bookfinder.  (They're usually very expensive.)

       In my jail cell--

   a shrinking pencil point

       grows many flowers.

(Originally published on Helium.com, 2009)