By Katie Dozier & Timothy Green Fungible Editions 2024, paperback, 40 pages ISBN: 978-1-961694-01-9 $12.99 USD Ordering Information
Hot Pink Moon takes readers on an exhilarating, back-and-forth romp while also introducing a new twist on linked haibun. As Dozier notes in the introduction, the spark for Hot Pink Moon arrived while the couple were doing their laundry. Dozier had just finished a chapbook (Watering Can, featuring a month’s worth of poems in various forms, including haiku) and was looking for a new project. Green, while matching striped socks, came up with the idea of adapting for haibun the concept of a sonnet crown—a series in which each sonnet starts off with the final line of its predecessor, and the last sonnet ends with the initial sonnet’s first line. Over 30 days, the couple completed and linked 30 haibun. Each haibun ends with a single haiku and, as explained in the book’s introduction, “each word from the haiku is contained within the body of the next haibun, creating an interlocking chain of poems. The final jewel, the last haibun, circles back to the first by building a haiku from words in the first haibun’s body.” The book opens (appropriately, given the project’s origin) with a haibun about a new washer/dryer, and the following pieces range from musings on slang to a gathering of 89 Elvis impersonators on a ski slope. (It’s amazing what a handful of words will conjure.) The authors take some liberties in their linking—singular words sometimes turn into plurals, nouns into verbs, plurals into contractions. My favorite adaptation was when Green turned the noun/verb “I max” into an 80-foot “IMAX” screen. Only a few times did I fail to find a word from the previous haiku used, but I’d credit those cases to artistry and the spirit of the project trumping a slavish adherence to rules.
Dozier, the haiku editor of One Art who enjoys exploring the frontiers of poetry (she also curates the NFT Poetry Gallery), veers toward verse in her haibun; she opts more for couplets, quatrains, and free verse over paragraphs, at times introducing slant and internal rhymes. Green, who as the editor of Rattle has made a point of including haiku and haibun in that magazine’s pages, relies on traditional paragraphs, although the language is no less evocative. Neither are afraid to experiment with their haiku, which range from three lines to two lines to monostich to vertical haiku, some employing imaginative breaks and uses of punctuation. What remains consistent throughout, aside from the sheer creativity, is the obvious enthusiasm and joy that both poets are taking in their collaboration. It’s a joy that extends to the reader.
Excerpt:
Day 16 | Timothy Green
Tracks
Steam whispers from the electric kettle. The last of the snow melts from cherry blossoms. In a branch, a Dark-eyed Junco calls and calls to your ear the whole of its three-note album, training you not to listen.
the hours a line of boxcars empty or full
Day 17 | Katie Dozier
Roots
I marched out to the forest, followed by a line of Boxcar Children books, having packed a pail full of hours. I ate an orange and then pulled wild onions from the earth— a mix of Georgia clay, sand and dirt. How, even raw, the skinny ones smelled like soup. All the while reading, racing the empty sky. Foraging for the bottom of the pile, where I found Frost alive.
every word pages every word
Quietude
By Dan Hardison Self-published through Lulu.com 2024, Paperback, 148 pages $22.37 USD ISBN: 978-1-304-66499-0 Available fromLulu
Throughout this book, Dan Hardison displays his artistic eye with 74 haiga—all photographs, with a haiku or a tanka accompanying each—plus 30 haibun that are also connected with a photo, either one taken by Hardison himself or pulled from his family’s photo albums. The contents are grouped into seven sections, each with a general theme—some celebrate moments of discovery, others capture the passing seasons or chronicle the author’s own life, with vignettes from his childhood, his daughter’s youthful escapades, or the passing of family members (including pets). Handsomely produced, the book seems targeted toward a more general audience, with images that include a fair number of sunrises, sunsets, and seasonal shots of flowers and foliage. The haiku and tanka also seem geared to that audience: pleasant rather than provocative, with some reading less like poems and more like descriptive or even inspirational labels (“soothing and peaceful / yet exciting and forceful / where water falls” or “despite / the day’s failings / and beauty unnoticed / thank you Lord for allowing me / to be”). The haibun relate stories of his past, often with a sentimental or poignant air. Finishing this book, I felt I had been in the company of someone who simply appreciates life.
Excerpts:
The Painting
Your mother never liked the painting—too serious and not-smiling. You were more cheerful, more open and giving. I think of you each day and not because of the reminder on the wall, but because I wonder what you might have done or said. Now, your gaze is cast across the room forever keeping watch.
a gray day today with no sunrise or sunset just endless twilight
Portrait of Sam Hardison by Phillip Perkins o/c, 1967
