Reviews
I’ve been reviewing the situation. The following reviews focus mainly on haiku and tanka books, and were first published from about 1990 onward. As a result, some of these reviews may include ordering details that are no longer accurate. These are reviews I’ve written; for reviews of my books written by others, I provide links on the Books page, where available. See also Blurbs (which are a kind of review) and Recommended Books on Haiku. If you have any comments or questions, please contact Michael Dylan Welch.
★ = most recommended reviews (start with these)
Poetry Books
Archipelago by Arthur Sze
★ Kyoto’s Spirit of Place, Revealed
★ Shadows of Moments: A Review of Paul E. Nelson’s American Sentences
You Can’t Be Serious by Ronald Wallace
Haiku Anthologies
Climbing Mole Hill: An Anthology of Haiku and Haiga for the Republic of Mole Hill
Beginning: British Haiku Society Members’ Anthology 2016
★ The Dover Haiku Anthology: A Review [previously unpublished]
Full of Moonlight: Haiku Society of America 2016 Members’ Anthology
Haiku Anthology: Second International Haiku Conference
★ Haiku 21 (see also “Notes on Gendai Haiku”)
Impressions of Morning: Haiku by World Children
Listening to the Rain [previously unpublished]
★ Recognizing Influences: The Unswept Path
Individual Haiku and Senryu Collections
Alachua: North Florida Haiku by Kenneth C. Leibman
★ Along the Way by Gilles Fabre
American Gothic by Steven Carter
At Bat by Cor van den Heuvel
Between Waves by Alexis Rotella
Buzz by David Jacobs
Chester Creek Ravine by Bart Sutter
Chrysanthemum Dusk by Susan B. Auld
Clocking Out by Carlos Colón [previously unpublished]
★ Complex Echoes: A Review of North Lake by Ce Rosenow
Dandelion Seeds by Arvinder Kaur
Desert Wind by Ferenc Bakos
Drumming in the Free World by Kim Redshaw
The Essence of Modern Haiku by Seishi Yamaguchi
The Fingertips of a Glassblower by Bill Cooper
First Frost by Zhu Hao
★ Flamingo Shapes by John Barlow
From the Upper Room by anne mckay
Getting On by Ernest J. Berry
Grandma’s Chip Bowl by David Jacobs
★ Grit, Grace, and Gold by Kit Pancoast Nagamura
The Haiku Bag by Naomi Beth Wakan
Haiku Chiaroscuro by David Cobb
Haiku Edge: New and Selected Haiku by Robert Epstein
★ Haiku, Green Tea & Sushi by Ernest J. Berry [see previously unpublished longer version]
Happy Wake Up by Milenko D. Ćirović Ljutički
Horizon by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Hundreds of Wishes by Francine Porad
★ Joy in Me Still by George Swede
Monsoon by William Hart
★ Noddy by Robert Spiess
One Leaf Detaches by Margaret Chula
★ ongoing song: the voice of anne mckay
The Open Eye by Lenard D. Moore
A Path of Desire: Tan Renga by Peter Newton and Kathe L. Palka
★ Practicing Kindness: Mitsu Suzuki’s A White Tea Bowl
Puerto Rico by Anita Virgil
The Regulars by Matthew Paul and Waiting for the Seventh Wave by John Barlow
Senryu: Poems of the People by J. C. Brown
Small Things Make Me Laugh by Yu Chang
★ Snow Bones by Masaya Saito
39 Haiku by Robert Kania
Voice of the Cicada by Raffael de Gruttola
★ Wall Street Park: A Concrete Renku by Raffael de Gruttola and Carlos Colón
★ Wanting the Mouth of a Lover by Charles Gramlich [previously unpublished]
Waveforms: Bull Island Haiku by Pat Boran
What Light There Is by Sylvia Forges-Ryan
Winnows by Maxianne Berger
★ Young Osprey by Bill Cooper
Books About Haiku
★ African American Haiku: Cultural Visions, edited by John Zheng [see unpublished longer version]
★ Contextualization Icebergs: A Review of On Haiku by Hiroaki Sato
Discovering Fire by David Grayson
★ The Haiku Seasons by William J. Higginson
JuxtaOne and JuxtaTwo, edited by Peter McDonald
★ Renga Roots: Haiku Before Haiku by Steven D. Carter
★ Sharing Experience: Robert Aitken’s River of Heaven
★ Shiki’s Winter: Donald Keene’s The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki
★ Three Simple Lines by Natalie Goldberg
Books for Children or Young Adults
★ Birds on a Wire by J. Patrick Lewis and Paul B. Janeczko
★ Feeling Haiku Through Thin Wood Walls by David Patneaude
Least Things by Jane Yolen
Origami Pinwheels by Kay L. Tracy
Three Tanka Books for Children (Tony Medina’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy, Robert Paul Weston’s Sakura’s Cherry Blossoms, and Nikki Grimes’ Garvey’s Choice)
★ Two Books for Children (Keisuke Nishimoto’s Haiku Picturebook for Children and Matthew Gollub’s Cool Melons—Turn to Frogs!) [previously unpublished]
Yuki and the One Thousand Carriers by Gloria Whelan [previously unpublished]
Novels Featuring Haiku
★ Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King
★ Feeling Haiku Through Thin Wood Walls by David Patneaude
The Haiku Murder by Fran Pickering
The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart
Recordings
Sigmatropic: Sixteen Haiku and Other Stories
Tanka Anthologies
Modern Tanka in Japan [not strictly a review, but related]
★ Outcry from the Inferno: A Book Review
Individual Tanka Collections
Short Songs: Tanka Poems by Amelia Fielden
This Hunger, Tissue-Thin by Larry Kimmel
A Sprig of Thyme by Reiko Nakagawa
Like Salt on Sun Spray by Pamela Miller Ness
Poems in the Attic by Nikki Grimes
The Cold Moon Watching by Helen Robinson
Tracing Your Ribs by Claudia Rosemary Coutu
★ Directions in Tanka: Kenneth Tanemura’s No Love Poems [previously unpublished]
Other Tanka Books
★ Surveying Recent Tanka Criticism
Takuboku Ishikawa and Bokusui Wakayama in English and Spanish translated by Harue Aoki
★ The Way of Tanka by Naomi Beth Wakan
Three Tanka Books for Children (Tony Medina’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy, Robert Paul Weston’s Sakura’s Cherry Blossoms, and Nikki Grimes’ Garvey’s Choice)