In and Out of Fog

In and Out of Fog by Lee Gurga. Illustrations by Lidia Rozmus. Press Here, 1997, 60 pages, paperback, 5 by 5 inches. $13.00 postpaid from Press Here, P.O. Box 4014, Foster City, California, 94404 [address no longer correct]. Lee Gurga’s new book is a small letterpress volume featuring one or two poems per page, divided into six sections. As a follow-up to his previous haiku book, The Measure of Emptiness (Press Here, 1991), In and Out of Fog showcases 44 of Lee’s fine haiku-many of which have won or placed in haiku contests. In the introduction, Randy Brooks writes that Lee’s haiku are “the steady, exact images of authentic living,” and that “His haiku turn on the experience itself, with enough phrasing to establish voice but enough brevity to leave the significance to the reader’s own imagination. Here are a pair of samples:

rows of corn

    stretch to the horizon—

        sun on the thunderhead

school bus gone—

    the old cedar

        in & out of fog