Public Republic

Barbara Sabol

Photo: hmr

The haiku in Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku blend a distinctly city-savvy content with the nature-oriented perspective of traditional haiku. A true son of haiku lineage, George’s haiku are sensory-bound sketches, alive with the sounds, smells, textures and colors of the city as a unique phenomenon in the natural world. At play in these haiku are well-balanced juxtapositions of the natural and man-made, vis-à-vis our societal habits and quirks, observed with humor and with heart.

George writes accessible, highly imagistic and insightful haiku that freeze-frame familiar moments, capturing our senses and engaging our minds. Crafted with a gift for description, wit and delightful irony, Barry George achieves the poet’s task: to lift an experience from a quotidian backdrop and place it squarely in his reader’s imagination. These haiku are very big gifts in small packages; a literary pleasure from start to start.

Whether that reader resides in city, town or country.

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Barry about the Japanese literary tradition, his own experience writing haiku and how, over the years, the process has served both as a lens on the world and a mirror into the soul.