Haiku and Yield to the Willow
Morning runners at the finishing line— a gull wheels away * Don Wentworth's Yield to the Willow is a collection of very short poems, most of which are haiku, but not all. It's an enjoyable read but nothing earthshaking. He can be very concise, achieving insight and pathos through wordplay: Sutra Blues the haunted man needs no house A small household incident can turn into a question of ontology: freeing centipede trapped in the tub I step inside myself His observational powers can be matched by a delicacy in form: bits of grit & oh oil in the ash But too many pieces read like throwaways, and were probably written the same way: in memory in the moment, always or they are overly didactic, which even Zen-inspired verse can be: hole in the center of the snowflake another koan revealed What compounds Wentworth's challenge is that he has chosen to begin each chapter with a quotation from a poetry or Zen master, and these quotat...