Page last updated: August 11, 2010
All pages copyright © 2010 by Pinyon Publishing
SPILLED MILK:
Haiku Destinies
By Gary Hotham
In these finely crafted poems, the work of a decade of noticing, observing, and writing, Gary Hotham asks us to see in the dark with our eyes wide open.
not here long—
a child asks to see
a star fall
PRAISE FOR SPILLED MILK
Gary Hotham richly deserves his place in American haiku literature. Insightful, Hotham takes you into the true meaning of a haiku moment—that moment of awakening. His work never tells you how to feel, it just shares with you the revelation of being in the moment and sensing how life evolves around us. Funny, insightful, quiet, meaningful, and brilliant: these are the works of a haiku master. —Garry Gay, former President of the Haiku Society of America
Poignancy. The word never appears in haiku, yet it is what they live by. The doors we notice opening on light that goes out, and yet was enough. Here is another feast of glimpses from an acknowledged master of noticing.
—Les Murray, Australian Poet
Gary Hotham never generalizes, rather from the first line he engages with the specific, drawing us into his uniquely individual world, his idiosyncratic way of seeing things which is never so personal that it fails to communicate.
—Caroline Gourlay, Haiku Writer
Gary Hotham pays attention to the art of noticing, so each haiku is a gift of a single insight. He doesn’t overwork his haiku with literary ambiguity or symbolic complexity. He doesn’t make haiku to justify a poetic theory or innovative approach. He simply lets his haiku emerge from being alive—noticing the details of the immediate lived experience conveyed in a conversational style that suggests spontaneous response. The images and words resonate beyond the surface level of sensations into our own memories, associations, and consciousness of being alive. In Hotham’s haiku we get to feel the significance of each day’s gift of noticing.
—Randy Brooks, Editor of Mayfly
I’ve always loved Gary’s haiku. —Marlene Mountain, Haiku Writer
You can open this book anywhere and start reading with pleasure. But the best way to read it is to start at the beginning and make your way through slowly, taking your time, because this isn’t merely a collection of lovely haiku in random order—it’s a sequence that gathers power as it goes. —John Wilson, Editor of Books & Culture
GARY HOTHAM has been crafting English language haiku for over 40 years. Echoing T.S. Eliot, for Hotham, writing haiku is to “devour any kind of experience” and fulfills the poet’s “task of trying to find
the verbal equivalents for states of mind and feeling.”
Born in Maine and currently living in Maryland, Hotham has enjoyed the pleasant experiences of traveling and living in foreign lands: Japan, Germany, England, Texas.
Page last updated: August 11, 2010
All pages copyright © 2010 by Pinyon Publishing