Koi: A Modern Folk Tale

by Sheldon Harnick, Margery Gray Harnick (Photographer), Matt Harnick (Photographer)

Koi are unusually beautiful creatures. Perhaps because of their unusual beauty, koi have inspired a variety of legends. The recurrent theme in these legends is that koi, because of their endurance and perseverance, have become symbolic of overcoming adversity and fulfilling one's destiny. In one of the more celebrated versions of this legend, koi are rewarded for their endurance and perseverance by being transformed into dragon fish.

In their book KOI, Margery and Sheldon Harnick have created their own version of this legend in photographs and verses. In their version, koi are rewarded for a reason other than endurance and perseverance. Though the years, the gods have noted how much pleasure men and women have derived simply from observing the
prismatic beauty of the koi. For this gift to mankind, the gods decided to transform the most beautiful koi into majestic and powerful dragons.

Margery Harnick's photographs not only show this transformation taking place but also capture the remarkable beauty of these creatures in ways that most people have never seen. (Additional photographs by Matt Harnick portray the gods and the dragons.) And since koi are Asian in origin, Sheldon Harnick has chosen to deliver the narrative in the form of haiku verses. The union of photographs and verses makes a charming and artistically satisfying combination.

52 pages, Hardcover

First published June 21, 2017

About the author

Sheldon Harnick was a poet and lyricist best known for his collaborations on hit musicals like Fiddler on the Roof and Fiorello!. Mr. Harnick won three Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Reviews

[Gary Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Koi: A Modern Folk Tal is a coffee table book that can also be considered a picture book. The photographs by Margery Gray Harnick and Matt Harnick show koi up close in photographs that are both beautiful and startling. The koi bodies are bright and colorful while their faces are dramatic and somewhat disturbing. Although the koi are obviously photographed in water, the water serves as almost irrelevant background as koi fill the pages. The text is a narrative set of haiku written by Sheldon Harnick, the veteran Broadway lyricist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tony Awards, Grammy Awards, and New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

As the haiku tell a tale of how gods rewarded koi for their beauty and persistence by transforming them into dragons, digitally-enhanced images of gods and dragons provide an appropriately unearthly fantasy element to the visual experience. This impressive Harnick family collaboration, handsomely produced by Beaufort Books, will forever change the way its readers view and understand koi.