Five Favorites: John Brandi
Five Favorites: John Brandi
by Michael Dylan Welch
John Brandi’s collection of new and selected haiku, At It Again, was published in 2015 by Tooth of Time Books. It presents 177 of Brandi’s best poems from a decades-long exploration of the haiku art. He says in a short author’s note that he sees these poems as twists or snippets, sometimes “private revelry” and “zaps of uninhibited delight, quiet revelations of the mysterious in the everyday.” Perhaps more importantly, what he says he’s presenting, and I would say seeking, is “a loosely-stitched record of daily life, or perhaps better said: ‘the life within a life.’” Here are five favorite haiku, showing the life within a life, from John Brandi’s At It Again.
Snow-covered tracks
the knock
I never answered
We can bring our own setting to this poem, especially if we’ve lived in a place where it snows, at the door of our own home. I picture the small town where the author lives, El Rito, New Mexico, which sits at an elevation of just below 7,000 feet. Whoever came to the poet’s door left tracks in the snow, and now they’ve been covered again, suggesting passages of time and perhaps the author’s preference for solitude. And yet we feel a wistful sense of wonder with this poem. Who had visited, and what might they have possibly wanted? The answer is only snow, a bit more of which has begun to cover those lonely tracks.
Tree of diamonds
all it took
was the night rain
The first line immediately arrests us with its impossibility, or perhaps overstatement.
