Customer Reviews

Bodhidharma Never Came To Hatboro and Other Poems

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If Kerouac actually had a meditation practice and wasn't so darn self-destructive, this is how he might have written. Doherty's writing is vibrant, it's hilarious, it moves fast and with precision. There's no sentimentality here -- it's all quick wit and take-no-prisoners perception. The descriptions in this book are flat-out amazing. Moving seamlessly from sketch-writing to haiku to list poetry to improvisational writing, entering each poem is like walking into a new room that Doherty has meticulously constructed. Bodhidharma Never Came to Hatboro is an 82-page masterpiece. It has none of the stuffy formality of School of Quietude verse, nor does it contain the mechanical irony of the contemporary crop New York School writers writing hapless verse via Google searches. If you are looking for poetry that delights, look no further. What's more amazing is that it comes from a serious, committed Zen practitioner who invites us to be reminded that every moment is a miracle. To quote Thoreau-- "It's more simple -- Less artful." If nothing else, these poems are clearly aligned to life!