Sunday, October 24, 2004
David Shumate's new book of prose poems, High Water Mark, doesn't actually have anything to do with haiku--but the author describes his short pieces as something like "haiku novels" -- short, compressed pieces of prose poetry. And he quotes J. D. Salinger on haiku: "One of his characters explained how reading a good haiku poem was like listening to someone walk into a quiet room with a cornet, blow 17 unmistakably beautiful notes on the instrument and then walk out. And that encounter is something unexpected and ultimately sublime and ultimately about transformation."