Huge Haiku

by David Macaleavey

Poetry. "The poems here feature the best kind of innovation, that which retains the old in the new but also gives readers what they have never seen before. David McAleavey expands the form of the haiku into something alive and incisively of our time. Through the mathematical rigor of their stanzas and lines, the poems in HUGE HAIKU open themselves out to an astonishing variety of experiences and disruptive contrasts. Whether the subject is the natural world, the suburbs or the city, growing up or growing older, politics or language or absurdity, these poems never settle for easy answers, but pull us repeatedly back into a world that's both dangerous and full of possibility. In so doing, McAleaveay takes the great virtue of haiku - its exctness of detail--and focuses it resolutely on our own contemporary and wildly layered strangeness" -- Mark Wallace.

Genres: Poetry

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Scott Hammer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A former professor of mine. A collection of, well, huge haikus. The simple fact of this book existing makes it worth reading, but it's inventive and exhausting in the best way possible.

"lost my keys, my car / speaking to you from the grave / squeezed, got juice, did not"

"what is there to save? / re-entry, vaporizing / to be continued"

[Hanna]

Hii