Silver Path of Moon: Haibun

Silver Path of Moon: Haibun by Janice M. Bostok. Post Pressed, 1996, 24 pages, paperback, 5½ by 8½ inches. $12.50 postpaid in Australia dollars from Post Pressed, 34 Verbena Street, Mt. Gravatt Q4122, Australia [address no longer correct]. Books of English-language haibun have appeared occasionally for a number of decades (I think of Robert Spiess’s Five Caribbean Haibun of 1972, Hal Roth’s Behind the Fireflies in 1982, Rod Willmot’s Ribs of Dragonfly in 1984, and Tom Lynch’s Rain Drips from the Trees in 1992). Here, with Silver Path of Moon, Janice Bostok offers a slim collection of five haibun about past loves. At times erotic, sensual, and confessional, these haibun (which she also illustrates herself) project the poet’s honesty and longing. A one-liner from “Winter’s Afternoon Indoors,” the book’s last haibun:

fire high my nipples erect