Review of Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku

by Don Wentworth

One must start from the beginning and simply say: the anthology Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku by a Bunch of Our Friends contains no poems about parsnips.

It’s important to be clear from the first.

That being said, Fifty-Seven, edited by Michael Dylan Welch and Alan Summers, does contain many a damn fine haiku. Published by Press Here, out of Sammamish, Washington, there are many strong voices here and lots to ponder.

Here’s a haiku that slips past you as fast as time itself:

a cloud across the sun

and suddenly

I am old

Helen Russell

A poem about child-rearing, poignant, that manages to be large enough to simultaneously contain a big lie and the biggest truth of all:

and so I agree

not to die before she does—

the sound of crickets

Susan Antolin

Two nifty ku by David Serjeant:

art gallery:

a toddler stoops

to watch a spider

David Serjeant

As truthful as this one is, the next is deeply touching:

autumn sunset

the baby scar

my mother loved

David Serjeant

From this brief selection, a poem that captures the essence of last things:

cottonwood rattle—

the wordlessness

of his final days

Deborah P. Kolodji

Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku contains 53 more modern haiku to roll about in the palm of the mind, looking for questions, wondering about answers, and contemplating that ultimate subject of subjects.

Here’s my contribution, just in case next time the editors are looking for parsnips . . .

A few random hairs

on his bulbous nose—

boiling parsnips