Splashes

by Cor van den Heuvel

Splashes presents unique and original haiku prose (haibun) poems by one of the early pioneers of English language haiku, Cor van den Heuvel. This collection includes works written from 1972 to 2013, published here in a book for the first time. The book also includes a selection of Cor’s haiga , combining art with haiku. “From his “Blobs!” on the page to the flight of birds and bugs within “Wings,”. . . the film noir of neon lights and melancholy glow of lamps within “The Last Streetlight.” All the “Joyful Things” Cor shares through his insightful autobiographical narratives exploring urban and rural settings witnessed through the keyhole of his keen eye, unlocking the wonders of our world with a sensitivity that will enchant and inspire any reader of this book. “The expression ‘nothing is lost on him’ must have been coined for Cor van den Heuvel. Here we witness an inquisitive eye and enthralled mind at play—one that can take what we take for quotidian things (street curb stones or bar footrests, for instance) and celebrate them for the small marvels they truly are. Splashes is a tonic in these all-too-cynical times.” — Scott Mason “This collection of haibun reminds me of the time Cor asked me to reproduce an Issa haiku on the computer. It was 1990: the doyen of haiku in America was to represent this country at the international conference in Shiki’s city, Matsuyama. He wanted to show the Issa piece as embodying the essence of haiku, a simple and deep observation of nature. So I translated all the haibun that made up ‘Puddles’ that began with Issa and Thoreau—for the Japanese magazine H aiku Kūkan ( Haiku Space ). I am happy to see it concludes Splashes .” — Hiroaki Sato, writer, and translator “One of the most original collections of haibun ever writ.” — Alan Pizzarelli “Cor van den Heuvel is perhaps best known as the editor of the three editions of The Haiku Anthology . For over 40 years, he has been a leader in the haiku movement and a tireless promoter of haiku and its related forms. He is a translator, a highly regarded critic, and one of the haiku movement’s foremost poets. Past president of the Haiku Society of America, his awards include three HSA Merit Book Awards, a World Haiku Achievement Award presented to him at the World Haiku Festival (2000) in London, and The Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Prize for 2002. Anyone interested in haiku ought to know who he is and should be familiar with his work.” — Nick Avis, Frog Pond (from a review of A Boy’s Seasons )

118 pages, Paperback

Published July 18, 2023

About the author

I discoverd haiku in 1958 in San Francisco and have concentrated my writing on that kind of poetry and its related genres (senryu, haibun, haiga, etc.) ever since. I grew up in Maine and New Hampshire. Between my freshman and sophomore years at the University of New Hampshire, I served three years in the U.S. Air Force. At that time I was interested in the poetry of John Keats and the science fiction of Ray Bradbury among other general literary interests. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I wasn't sure what kind.

Between my junior and senior years at UNH I took off a year to live in New York City, where I worked as a copyboy for the Woman's Home Companion. While in New York I saw the original English performance of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and began reading his works. I became a fan of Salinger's writing in the New Yorker.
After graduating from UNH with a BA in English Literature in 1957, I went to work as a cub reporter at the Concord Monitor in Concord, NH. It was in the fall of '57 while working at the Monitor that I happened to pick up at a local newstand the second issue of the Evergreen Review which was devoted to the San Francisco poetry renaissance. It had selections of work by Jack Kerouac, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Allen Ginsberg, and others. It was a whole new way of writing that impressed me so much that I decided to quit my job and go to San Francisco to experience it first hand.

I arrived in the city by the Bay in the spring of 1958 and found a room in a small hotel, The Sunny Hotel, on Bush Street just up from the corner of the street that runs through Chinatown all the way to North Beach where the poets hung out. There I met, in a bar called The Place, a poet who was part of the Robert Duncan/Jack Spicer group of writers who met periodically to read and discuss their work. He, George Stanley, happened to be hosting these meeting at the time and he invited me to attend them. At one of these meetings I met Gary Snyder who mentioned a kind of poetry called haiku and that began my long love affair with the genre.

(to be continued)