Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the pages of Seeds from a Birch Tree, Clark Strand redefines haiku as a literary art in English, and explains how to use the practice of writing and reading haiku as a form of meditation and as a path to self-awareness. Throughout this remarkable book, Strand provides specific examples of great haiku and the spiritual qualities they contain, and includes a few simple exercises to help you get started in composing your own haiku. But Seeds from a Birch Tree is not only a book about writing haiku. It also follows Strand's passage from haiku novice to a place of understanding, both of haiku and of himself. Along the way, he shares his personal experiences as a Zen student, a Zen Buddhist monk, and a haiku teacher.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Here's how Strand, an ordained Zen Buddhist monk and director of the largest Zen Buddhist training center in New York City, explains the connection between writing haiku and the practice of Buddhist meditation: "Haiku is the one poetic form in all of world literature that concerns itself primarily with nature, the one form that makes nature a spiritual path." This cogent book explains the philosophy and composition of haiku, and the form's intrinsic meditative qualities, to the general reader and writer. The first of three sections, "The Way of Haiku," strikes an inviting note when Strand suggests that readers gain self-awareness by taking walks in nature, carrying a notebook and learning to "sketch"-with words-what they see. The second section, "Haiku Mind," explores ways of looking at nature, using objects likes daisies and qualities like "coolness" as examples, and of meditating upon them to appreciate and later express their fundamental nature. The final section, "The Narrow Road," examines the inward-focused, personal dimension of haiku. Readers interested in poetry and meditation will appreciate this soothing, practical volume, and its simple message: "Seasonal, direct, and clear, the haiku form itself expresses the fundamental truth about human life." (July)
Library Journal
The subtle simplicity of haiku depends on the complex balance of structure, object, image, and impression. The 17-syllable poem combines two phrases, arranged in three lines; balanced by a pause that presents the picture of a seasonal object as it exists for the poet, the poem demands freshness and a total lack of pretension. To achieve such a response is an ongoing process, suggests Strand, a Zen Buddhist monk, senior editor of Tricycle, and founder of New York Haikukai. Writing haiku is a meditation for this process, a spiritual journey toward an understanding of the world and the poet's place in it. Strand maintains that progressing toward spirituality and writing haiku are interdependent and mutually beneficial. Libraries that need a basic introduction to haiku should turn to The Essential Haiku (LJ 6/1/94). Strand's slim volume focuses more on the struggle to maintain spiritual discipline.Denise S. Sticha, Seton Hill Coll. Lib., Greensburg, Pa.
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