Following is my haiku book review of The Heart of the Canyon by Elizabeth Hyde, a very exciting novel about a group of strangers white water rafting through the Grand Canyon.
Strangers colliding
Adventure on white waters
Face nature’s terror
Time for another haiku inspired by another of my all-time favorite books, Cleo by Jean Brody. Set in the 1920s, the novel follows teenage spitfire Cleo from the country to the city and back to the country, through love, loss, quirky comedies, and family dramas. I’d recommend it to fans of Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is
Cleo by Jean Brody
Country girl escape
Speakeasy, Reverend heat
Strawberry secret
The Dead is a short story in The Dubliners by James Joyce. You can hear an audio version recorded by my Irish husband over at Librivox. Following is a haiku I wrote after recently re-reading the story:
The Dead by James Joyce
Snow on his shoulders
Gathering, his heart bestirred
Her secret sorrow
This is haiku review of another all-time favorite book of mine by another all-time favorite author of mine. It is also one of the most well written and poetic novels I’ve ever read…
Away by Jane Urquhart
Irish girl Moira
Seaside inamorata
Frontier family.
The Voyage by Philip Caputo
Banished boys at sea.
Survival of the fittest.
A Gothic epic.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:
Man who would be God.
Sad creation abandoned.
Doomed to wander. Lost.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville:
Call me Ishmael.
Ahab’s white whale heart of Hell.
Obsessed depths of death.
Inspired by the contest that I won on The Paul & Spike Show, I’m starting a new series of “Haiku Book Reviews” on Muruch. The first haiku, which won the contest, is about my favorite book of all time:
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Ludicrous mankind.
No damn cat, no damn cradle.
A doomsday satire.
Contrast Podcast – Poetry (mp3)
Hannah Fury – Beware The Touch (mp3)
Or if that link doesn’t work, you can grab the song on this page.
“The Erl King” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp’d in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.
“My son, wherefore seek’st thou thy face thus to hide?”
“Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?”
“My son, ’tis the mist rising over the plain.”
“Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
Full many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold.”
“My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?”
“Be calm, dearest child, ’tis thy fancy deceives;
‘Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves.”
“Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They’ll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep.”
“My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?”
“My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
‘Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight.”
“I love thee, I’m charm’d by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou’rt unwilling, then force I’ll employ.”
“My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last.”
The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,–
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.
