This collection of haiku and Western-style verse by an American living in Japan brings a special poetic vision to the endless cycle of life, and to its separate rhythmic movements. Readers will find again and again in these pages the sharpened sensibility and clear observation developed by the haiku discipline. One of the aims of this book, according to its author, is to reveal the similarities between haiku and Western-style verse. Its undeniable achievement is a rediscovery of the universals of emotion and expression uniting all people. In Haiku style, though not always in haiku form, these poems invite the reader to a poignant perception of identity in apparently unrelated things and people--a Westerner falling in love or out of love with Japan; a country girl dazzled by Ginza's bright lights; a sleeper wakened by "all-night thunder," wondering "who can dream of the old days with, such violence"; a wanderer among the tombstones of Tokyo or a New England cemetery. And readers will find again in these pages the sharpened sensibility and clear observation developed by haiku discipline.
