My Red: The Selected Haiku
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ISBN 978-1-929820-21-4 ORDER Directly from Brooks Books Brooks Books Special Discount for Web Site Orders! If you order a copy of MY RED: The Selected Haiku of John Stevenson directly from this Brooks Books web site, you receive a 20% discount. Therefore your cost is $24.00 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling. Order your copy through this Paypal link: |
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In order to celebrate the publication of this collection, John Stevenson commissioned a promotiona videol trailer. He hopes you will enjoy it and that this small sample of poems from MY RED will encourage you to read the entire collection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkgX2o2zzZ0 This video reading of haiku by John Stevenson was produced by Logan Rando. |
INTERNATIONAL PDF Edition Due to the expense of shipping a clothbound book to international addresses, Brooks Books is pleased to offer a PDF edition of MY RED: The Selected Haiku of John Stevenson for haiku orders ONLY from addresses outside the United States. The price for the PDF edition is the same as the print edition, but this saves international customers the $25 postage cost. ORDER the PDF edition from Brooks Books |
MY RED Videos & Reviews
This video reading of haiku by John Stevenson was produced by Logan Rando.
Video book review by Michael Rehling, Editor of FAILED HAIKU. |
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SAMPLE HAIKU Christmas Day
full moon
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since you moved
revising poems
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“In New York State, in the land of the old Iroquois Confederacy, is a writer with a darker vision than most American haiku poets. John Stevenson, who was born in Ithaca on October 9, 1948, grew up in the wooded farm and vineyard areas of the Finger Lakes region, and has lived all his life in New York. Half his life has been spent in rural areas, the rest in Buffalo, Ithaca, and New York City. Stevenson began as an art major at Buffalo State College but graduated with a degree in theater and was a professional actor for most of his twenties. Stevenson relates this activity to his haiku writing, believing that the two pursuits ‘have important areas of shared aesthetics.’ . . . it is not surprising that he admires the work of Samuel Beckett: ‘Beckett’s impulse toward ever briefer dramas both parallels and strongly contrasts with my sense of the motives that attract me and other Westerners to the brevity of haiku.’ Stevenson’s views of life and the world, and his choice of subject matter, result in haiku that suggest the cynical and ironic existential despair that Beckett’s plays relentlessly and broodily embody. Of course Stevenson writes other kinds of haiku as well, but this trend is apparent in much of his work. ~ Cor van den Heuvel |
“No one has the authority to tell you what an English-language haiku should be, especially not me. This is an open question and still in the process of being answered. But since you are, at this moment, offering your poems to me, I can tell you something about what I like in a haiku. I like to see a simple but well-made poem that registers first as a clear sensory image and then suggests “something more.” If that “something more” resolves quickly into some particular thought or insight — an answer — that is less satisfying for me than if it remains an indefinite stimulation of intuition. I prefer this, not because I value the senses and intuition over intellect but because I believe that, once the rational mind is engaged, it tends to dull and even overpower any further input from the senses and intuition.” ~ John Stevenson “It has long been my contention that at any given time there are only a few true poets working in any particular genre. They generally fall into one of two categories: poets who are ahead of their time, and will not be recognized until time has stripped away what is extraneous; and poets who are recognized as speaking so perfectly to their time that their work seems an embodiment of it. John Stevenson is of this latter camp.” ~ Jim Kacian |