haiku

The setting sun fills the darkening blue-purple sky with pink and orange streaks, vivid enough to catch my attention through the kitchen window. I step out onto the deck and the cool air on my face reminds me: It’s all still here. The sky, the air, the trees, the space around me. Nothing has gone […

Urban canyon a hundred birds turn as one and disappear

between the Tesla and the Jaguar :: an almost-full moon

I was very happy to appear on the NPR and WBUR radio program On Point last week, for an hourlong discussion of haiku with the host, Tom Ashbrook. Guests included Frogpond editor George Swede and economist Stephen Ziliak (the author of an essay called “Haiku Economics” in the most recent issue of Poe

Poet and publisher Dave Bonta spoke to me on the phone awhile back for his “Woodrat” podcast. He got me to talk about everything from how I handle submissions to tinywords, what my publishing philosophy is, why haiku is important, and what I learned from studying poetry with Louise Glück. We also ta

Thanks to the internet, haiku is making a return to the kind of collaborative, interactive spirit out of which it originally emerged almost four centuries ago. As the editor of tinywords, I’ve seen this kind of evolution emerge spontaneously on many occasions. To see what I mean, let’s first rewind

one drop trembling on the lip of the lily     Published in the Fall 2010 issue of Frogpond

inside the tight curlof the yucca leafa wood spider haiku published on A Handful of Stones, 19 August 2010

This essay is forthcoming as a broadsheet from Cross+Roads Press, and is based on an interview published on Basho’s Road in December, 2009. For me, poetry is language under compression. And there’s no more compressed form than the very short poem. Skillfully done, a tiny poem can speak volumes — it

The haiku and micropoetry journal I edit, tinywords, got 875 submissions in the course of 2 weeks for our upcoming summer issue. Since I expect I’ll be able to publish about 50 or 60 poems in this issue, that means the acceptance rate is going to be significantly less than 10%. It also means I […]

Sun’s erstwhile CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced his retirement Wednesday night in a uniquely geeky way: With a haiku posted to Twitter. Financial crisis Stalled too many customers CEO no more Schwartz’s decision to announce his departure in the form of a short, Japanese lyric was, perhaps, a veiled

From my own experience, and the experience of friends who had spent months to years to a lifetime devoted to little magazines and small presses, I knew in my bones that tinywords had become overwhelming. This stuff eats you alive. But I also knew, it’s damn hard to let go once you made your mark. […