Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart [Paperback]

Haiku, the Japanese form of poetry written in just three lines, can be miraculous in its power to articulate the profundity of the simplest moment—and for that reason haiku can be a useful tool for bringing us to a heightened awareness of our lives. Here, the poet Patricia Donegan shares her experience of the haiku form as a way of insight that anyone can use to slow down and uncover the beauty of ordinary moments. She presents 108 haiku poems—on themes such as honesty, transience, and compassion—and offers commentary on each as an impetus to meditation and as a key to unlocking the wonder in what we find right before us.“Haiku Mindcontains the best—the most insightful—commentary on haiku since the great works of R. H. Blyth. If you want to know what haiku is about, what a haiku can do, why haiku are important, read this book. Patricia Donegan looks into the heart of haiku by exploring outstanding individual examples with a perceptive, aware, and sensitive eye. The literary essay has never known finer moments.”—Cor van den Heuvel, editor ofThe Haiku Anthology Patricia Donegan is a poet, translator, and promoter of haiku as an awareness practice. She was a faculty member of East-West poetics at Naropa University under Allen Ginsberg and Chögyam Trungpa; a student of Japanese haiku master Seishi Yamaguchi; and a Fulbright scholar to Japan. She is a meditation teacher, the poetry editor forKyoto Journal, and a member of the Haiku Society of America. Her haiku works includeHaiku Mind:108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart,Chiyo-ni: Woman Haiku Master  (co-translated with Yoshie Ishibashi), andHaiku: Asian Arts for Creative Kids. Her poetry collections includeWithout Warning, Bone Poems,andHot Haiku.US