Your Thoughts

Alone with your thoughts. The following are various comments and endorsements I’ve received for this website over the years, in no particular order, although more recent ones appear at the end. Some have been written as intentional blurbs in support of Graceguts, but most have been unsolicited comments that I’ve been pleased to receive, posted here with permission, or a few that have been posted publicly on social media. My gratitude to everyone who has visited this website and has taken the time to share their thoughts. If you have feedback to share, please let me know.

—Michael Dylan Welch


“You’ve created a very rich and visually aesthetic site. I’ll be back! It’s a great site to refer beginning poets to, so they can take a look at the many different forms written in the haiku spirit.”

—Philomene Kocher, Kingston, Ontario

“Thanks so much for the rich, thought-provoking site you have created. I am working my way through the content and learning a vast amount. Some of your essays may inspire essays of my own on my site [haikuproject.wordpress.com].”

Melissa Allen, Madison, Wisconsin

“I’ve been enjoying your site. It looks great and is easy to navigate. So nice to see it on the web, and I’ll be sure to visit from time to time. Thanks for sharing!”

Collin Barber, Memphis, Tennessee

“Love the E. E. Cummings poem that inspired your website’s name. That is just how I feel. Gimme a plain ’ol redblooded poem anytime! Graceguts is a great website. I recommend it at every haiku workshop I do!”

Terri L. French, Huntsville, Alabama

“Graceguts is like opening the case of a self-winding watch. I already knew from many conversations that Michael Dylan Welch is a fine time-keeper, especially concerning short-form poetry, particularly haiku and tanka. His website shows me what makes him tick so reliably—his gears, balance wheel, mainspring, and jewels. Graceguts is a Rolex in the online haiku world.”

George Swede, Toronto, Ontario; cofounder, Haiku Canada, former editor Frogpond

“Michael was a featured poetry reader and workshop instructor at the Field’s End writers conference. He gave such an amazing, authentic performance that I just don’t know how people who might not be fans of poetry could have felt the same afterward. He is a true ambassador for the Japanese forms he practices, and for someone whose efforts to celebrate these forms are global, he’s a very unassuming, humble guy. We need more poets in our midst just like him.”

Tamara Kaye Sellman, Bainbridge Island, Washington

“I have been touring your Graceguts site with great pleasure.”

Marie Marshall, Scotland

“Any book edited by Michael Dylan Welch will be vital for any haiku writer’s library.”

Alan Summers, Bradford-on-Avon, England

“How wonderful to find your Graceguts website. What an amazing resource—I may never leave! Although we might not bump into each other very much, I have always enjoyed your work in the haiku arts.”

Ron Moss, Tasmania, Australia

“I’ve been sharing a lot of links from your Graceguts site lately. What a great resource—thank you! I even got my dad interested in haiku and now he can think beyond 5-7-5.”

Christina Nguyen, Hugo, Minnesota

‘Becoming a Haiku Poet’ is the best introduction to haiku I have ever read! I am just sorry that I hadn’t read it when I first started studying haiku.”

—Patricia Lidia, Timisoara, Romania

“I enjoy everything Michael Dylan Welch posts, his poetry, his photos, and his involvement with the world around him. He brings positivity into my life. I just wish I had time to look at all your photos, read all your poems, go to all your links. Thank you, Michael, for brightening my days and inspiring me to continue to create.”

—Marel Kalyn, Portland, Oregon

“Your website is a treasure trove for any poet. Thank you for the hours of reading you’ve already given me.”

—Peter Newton, Winchendon, Massachusetts

“I’ve just discovered your Graceguts website and appreciate it very much. It is a rare kind of moment on the Internet. I just wanted to send you this appreciation.”

Rachel Blum Krauser, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“Graceguts is an amazing resource: essays, books, book reviews, fun, haiku, haibun, photo-haiga, poetry, thinking, photography, micropoetry—an Aladdin’s cave!”

Stella Pierides, Neusäß, Germany and London, England

“Your essays on haiku are fantastic. I could not agree more regarding the ‘invisibility’ of the writer. If we are distracted by the writer’s form, language, or presence, we are unlikely to experience that flash of insight or intuition present in successful haiku. I found and read your early attempts at haiku, too, and I’m staggered by the leap you’ve made. These early attempts are invaluable in illustrating how far we newbies must travel in order to master haiku. You have mastered haiku. Your haiku contain that ‘flash’ and you are barely present. It’s brilliant. There are enormous leaps from the mundane to revelation. And to do it in fewer than twenty syllables is like a magic trick that wowed me as a child. Graceguts is a generous and successful effort. Thank you. I will have many questions for you along the way. Your site has been enormously helpful and I’ve visited for only two days! Well done, Michael. Wonderful essays and great teaching. [An additional later comment:] Thanks to you and the lessons learned from your website. Graceguts is an invaluable teaching tool and I’ve learned so much from it. Thank you again for your time and hard work on behalf of haiku. Your site is wonderful and brave in a world of shallow pursuits.”

Forrest Cole, Keyser, West Virginia

“I really love Graceguts. It always has the good stuff.”

Violette Rose-Jones, Coffs Harbour, Australia

“Graceguts is an awesome website! It’s chock full of great information, a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration. A real go-to site for anything and everything related to haiku, with a few extras thrown in. How many words about haiku have you written? A million? Two? Wow!”

—Barbara Hay, Ponca City, Oklahoma

“Any Google reference that points to pieces on haiku by Michael Dylan Welch—a brilliant, sensitive interpreter and writer of, and about, haiku—you will find very useful.”

Naomi Beth Wakan, Gabriola, British Columbia

[in her book, The Way of Haiku (Gabriola, British Columbia: Pacific-Rim Publishers, 2012), page 85]

“Graceguts. Just what the mind ordered.”

—Tim Singleton, Columbia, Maryland

“Graceguts is an invaluable site. Thank you! Every time I visit this site there is something fresh and new.”

Hazel Hall, Canberra, Australia

“Amazing collection of info at Graceguts!”

Mark Brooks, Albany, Oregon

“Graceguts is fantastic and I enjoy my visits very much.”

Don Baird, Burbank, California

“You write amazing, beautiful tanka as I think they should be written. Wonderful.”

Joy McCall, Norwich, England

“Graceguts is well worth your time and effort. It’s one of the best sources of information on haiku in all its forms.”

Stephen Gray, Las Vegas, Nevada

“I have visited Graceguts in the past but I had not explored it as much as I have recently and must say it is an incredible labyrinth and wonderful resource!”

Tom Clausen, Ithaca, New York

“I have learned so much from you over the years about tanka and rengay. Your website, Graceguts, has been an amazing and invaluable resource for me. I have read so many of your articles and have used quite a few of them as teaching tools. A lot of what you have said and shared has informed my own writing and my appreciation of tanka, rengay, and haiku. I thank you for the time you spend sharing with others that helps our growth as poets.”

David Terelinck, Biggera Waters, Australia

“Your website is wonderful: so well organised, which is useful for people like me, for whom it’s all new (it could be a bit overwhelming if it were less carefully organised). And the website is so generous in its spirit, so encouraging, one of the few websites I’ve encountered which I’ve found truly inspiring and look forward to returning to time after time. I can only assume that the flavour of the website strongly reflects you as a person. Thank you for a series of wonderful experiences.”

—Susan Andrew, Edinburgh, Scotland

“Just came across Graceguts. Amazing assembly of material.”

—Chris Gordon, Eugene, Oregon

“I’ve just spent two delightful hours in your company—on your website. Of course I was supposed to be doing something else! It’s been illuminating, interesting, amusing, and thought-provoking. There’s so much on the site that I marvel at it, and it seems churlish to pick out one of two things. However, I was particularly struck by the definition of haiku and senryu as ‘a finger pointing at the moon’ and ‘a finger poking you in the ribs.’ Thank you very much for enlightening, entertaining, and moving me.”

—Maggie Butt, Canterbury, England

“Thanks to Graceguts, I’ve ended my love affair with 5-7-5.”

—Deborah B. Shepherd, Midland, Virginia

“Graceguts is truly an Aladdin’s cave—I have got lost in there on the odd occasion and plan to do so some more.”

—Simon Hanson, Tamborine, Australia

“I am always amazed at what a prolific writer you are, and how willing you are to share with us, and be with us at Zoom meetings. Graceguts is a true gift! So often when I need inspiration or refreshment, I go to Graceguts and find just what I need. Thank you.”

—Carol Judkins, Carlsbad, California

“Every time I arrive at your site I think, why did I buy all those how-to haiku books? It’s all right here!”

—Jamie Jenkins, Vancouver, British Columbia

“Graceguts has been my goldmine of information ever since I started seriously writing haiku.”

—Kristen Lindquist, Camden, Maine

“Graceguts is such a wonderful resource!”

—Steve Bahr, Roseburg, Oregon

“I found your website and what a delight to be enlightened on the haiku form. My knowledge had started and ended at 5-7-5 in terms of form, so to be able to discover a richer and more complex subject has been a treat indeed. I feel I had been looking at a puddle and now see the sea.”

—Michael Young, near London, England

“I’m so pleased I found Graceguts. Thank you for all the time and effort you have put into producing this site, a sweetshop for any poet.”

—Petrina Meldrum, Adelaide, Australia

“I’m planning to explore more of your generous and informative website.”

—Kei Andersen, Jersey City, New Jersey