#NPM18 - 20/30 - Really A Review

             Two-thirds of Poetry Month is over and it's Poetry Friday. Come gather with Tabatha Yeatts-Lonske at The Opposite of Indifference. Thanks, Tabatha and congratulations on the publishing of Imperfect! Amazing, but true, I'm writing about a mistake this Poetry Friday!

April is  #NPM18 - National Poetry Month.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it. - Gustave Flaubert 

       Be sure to see the page on the bar above for the Progressive Poem's schedule of poets, hosted by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem.             

         Here's a surprise for all the Progressive Poem poets, found on my way to the bookstore. 

        And, see what many are doing for Poetry Month, by looking HERE at Jama Rattigan's post at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

          

              My goal for Poetry Month: A haiku diary that may include other forms related to haiku, like haibun, haiga. monoku or renga. My first poem speaks of why I am handwriting the poems.

April’s garden,

growing poems 

on lined pages

                    Linda Baie

links:

       

 Poem one

       Poem two

       Poem three 

       Poem Four

       Poem Five

       Poem Six  

       Poem Seven

       Poem Eight 

       Poem Nine 

       Poem Ten

      Poem Eleven

      Poem Twelve

      Poem Thirteen

      Poem Fourteen

      Poem Fifteen

      Poem Sixteen 

      Poem Seventeen

      Poem Eighteen

      Poem Nineteen

Here is poem twenty:  

      I made a big mistake this week, hoping to make amends today. Last Monday, I shared this book cover photo of H Is for Haiku: A Treasury of Haiku from A to Z by Sydell Rosenberg and Sawsan Chalabi implying that I was sharing and reviewing it. Well, I had the review ready but did not add it to my post. I thought I had and I even shared with Amy Losak, who has shepherded this book of her mother's till publication, that it was there! Yikes! So in addition to the wonderful reviews by Robyn Hood Black here, Matt Forrest Esenwine here, and Michelle Heidenrich Barnes here, I'm sharing my own excitement about this wonderful book here today! REALLY!

         As you know, I’ve been writing haiku this month and this treasure arrived last week that seemed just for me, a new picture book by Sydell Rosenberg, illustrated by Sawsan Chalabi, and lovingly fostered by Sydell’s daughter, Amy Losak. It’s H Is for Haiku A Treasury of Haiku from A To Z.  Studying haiku isn’t easy, and these words leapt out to me in the introduction, “What is Haiku?”.  I even created a visual that I could print out to hang by my desk!

         Sydell passed away more than twenty years ago, was one of the first members of the Haiku Society of America and published many of her poems, but one wish was never fulfilled, a book of haiku for children. Now, these three women have made this wish come true, and in a lovely, heartfelt way. The haiku spring to life on colorful pages with verbs that carry that message of a moment like “jaunt”, “caw-cawing”, “gleaming” and “glisten”.  Sydell persuades us to pause and consider sunflowers by the roadside, a first library card, a girl on a bike, each one when "the wingstrokes become sure". Sawsan Chalabi with whimsy in her brush strokes, sometimes allows the words to amble across the page, or settle in above the topic, like in this favorite: “Yesterday’s cool rain/left this flat puddle smoothing/the wrinkled leaves.” Those leaves are smiling on the page, too. Isn’t that great? 

         It’s not a long book, A to Z means twenty-six haiku, but it is filled to the brim with the joy of life’s hidden, sometimes fleeting, things that Sydell Rosenberg noticed and wanted us to see, too. And now we can!