Customer Reviews

Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

108 haiku, each a gem , followed by a short comment. The topics range from karma(a white lotus---/the monk decides/to cut it !) to justice(reflected/in the sword's blade/soft summer clouds), and each makes you think and reflect and , with luck, go 'Ah. I see." Good selections, both ancient and modern, as well as cultural, both Japanese and Western. A wonderful book.

Haiku Mind contains the best--the most insightful--commentary on haiku since the great works of R. H. Blyth. If you want to know what haiku is about, what a haiku can do, why haiku are important, read this book. Patricia Donegan looks into the heart of haiku by exploring outstanding individual examples with a perceptive, aware, and sensitive eye. The literary essay has never known finer moments.

Each of these 108 haiku is accompanied by a brief commentary that creates a context for the poem and explains how it works. The commentaries are insightful, although the titles for them (Pausing, Honesty, Sky-Mind) feel like editorial add-ons. I'm not quite as enthusiastic as the other reviewers, mainly because there's not enough about the language and structure of haiku here. But maybe my expectations are too literary. This is really a general audience book, which is in itself a laudable achievement. Give Haiku Mind book to everybody who doesn't understand why you spend all that time writing three-line poems that barely make sense: if they don't get it after reading the book, they never will.

I am just reading this book and enjoying it immensely. I am a freelance writer and haiku poet myself.

The power and beauty of haiku poetry is explored in depth.The author's interpretation of every poem is explained in a beautiful,evocative way, throughout.

This is a wonderful book to relax with, at the end of a busy day or week. You don't have to be an expert or regular follower of haiku to enjoy this book. Would make a memorable gift too.

This is a book of twin jewels - both in the haiku and in the beautifully written commentaries which accompany them. Donegan has created a collection of meditative experiences that will continue to resonate with repeated readings.

not only are the haikus selected poignant and beautiful, but the commentary is sweet and insightful. just a small sampling (some paraphrasing)...

"caught in our comfortable habitual thoughts, there is a gap, a crack long enough for the sound of a bird to penetrate us" (listening to nature, being in the present)

"pausing is the doorway to awakening"

"sky meditation puts us back to our natural state, as vast and open as the sky. all else is just thoughts and feelings, like clouds passing by"

"gratitude is necessary in a world yearning for peace"

This is a great little book. The haiku are diverse in subject matter and age. The information about the poets is sufficiently detailed. The collection is light but inspiring.

Listening to the poems speak first,crystalizes thought. Patricia's comments & interpretations afterward add to and are interesting where they differ. Truly all works of art.

This is a well-intentioned book that starts off as though it might be interesting and stimulating, but seems to run out of gas as it goes along. Indeed, the last third or so the book seems to tail off into frothiness and fluff. Many of the haiku are interesting, but the commentary is for the most part fairly thin gruel. Had I read only the first half or so of this book, I would have given it four stars, but the second half proved to be a disappointment.

Pissing
like
A race horse

A frog
jumps in

Dies

Kuayin
(c)2011