Customer Reviews

Breath Marks: Haiku to Read in the Dark

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I bought this book on a lark and found that one reading was not enough. I have read it many times over and seen varying images appear in each haiku. I have shared his haiku with others who also enjoy his breath. It is a beautiful slivered glimpse of haiku. Try reading it between an inhale and an exhale and feel the marks it leaves in your breath. A most appropriately titled book. I am looking forward to his next book.

There is something wondrously ironic and perfectly haiku-esque in the biblical scriptures noted in the introductory pages of this splendid, thin volume of haiku.

Perfectly Zen-like.

When I first read this book months ago I underlined this quote - which is a fitting introduction to Hotham's work:

"But why read or write poetry? Well, because poetry lets the writer do something with our language that other forms do not. And that something special is the energy inherent in the words and their arrangements."

I am not sure why one would want to read these words in the dark. All I can figure is that we can read them in the dark because of the quiet and sure echo or ripple they carry upon one's heart. While so very simple in form and so compact in number of words, the eighty haiku within continue to resonate for a long, long time.