I just devoured one of the most delightful novels I’ll ever read: Haiku Guy
This slim volume entertains and captivates, while wistfully teaching “about love,
poetry and just what it all might mean.” Along the way, it weaves in dozens of
one-breath poems that will make haiku afficionados smile, and turn the haiku-illiterate
into haiku addicts.
For example:
a moonlit gourmet —
cat
in the garbage
waterfall smash, crash!
then down the canyon
laughing
getting drunk
on my arm
the tavern mosquitos
“haiku guy gray” I’ll be posting more haiku from the novel, soon, and ordering
the sequel: The Laughing Buddha (2004, Red Moon Press)
Poet Michael McClintock left an excellent review of Haiku Guy at Amazon.com here’s an excerpt:
“Past, present, and future intermingle in a joyful, convincing chaos that creates its own inevitable order and comfortable familiarity. Lanoue thrusts his characters into a Buddha-dream world of random events and meetings, misdirection, hopeless desire and grasping, at the center of which we find the great poet Cup-of-Tea (Kobayashi Issa) in his later years, living in Kashiwabara village.
“Seeking the Master’s guidance comes the clueless and desperate wannabe village poet, Buck-Teeth. Out of their meeting Lanoue weaves a narrative fabric colored by Old Japan and haiku’s literary history, real and imagined, with new threads added from the bars, cafes and shrines of New Orleans’ dingy and holy Bourbon Street. Here is a tale that conveys with memorable force a comic vision of the creative process.”
p.s. To pique the interest of my webloggy Fool friend, as well as the Underground posse, and the N.O. techno-lawyer, let me note that there’s a hermit-Fool in this haiku tale. To the surprise of all, the rich and powerful Lord Kaga, once surrounded by an army of yes-men and possessed of all the newest gadgets of the day, gives it all up to live as a hermit. You’ll have to read the book to find out why (hint: there’s a woman and a tattoo involved).
by dagosan:
may I
please turn the page?
fly on my thumb
[dag, 06-09-04]
