Marc Awodey's "NEW YORK a haibun journey" has been described as "a poetic voyage into a harrowing artistic and spiritual nether world. What Awodey evokes is the kind of pathos and desperate insight of the Consul found in Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano." It is also a stunning technical achievement- Awodey has reinvented and redefined the haibun form- traditionally a mixture of narrative combined with a concluding haiku. Awodey’s sections often begin with haiku, and are followed by prose narratives that morph back and forth into poetry as he rewrites most -if not all- of the haiku and haibun rules.
However, New York: A Haibun Journey is more than a technical achievement or chronicle of self-destruction. Its rhythm and pacing are consciously symphonic. It is a personal journey that in a strange, sad, and ultimately redemptive way foreshadows the destruction and reverberations of Sept. 11. It's Awodey's Howl. It's poetry for our 21st century times.
