Quick Hits: A Brief Collection of Black & Blue Gridiron Haiku [Paperback]

Bill Mattia (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: 1st Book Library; illustrated edition edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0759632219
• ISBN-13: 978-0759632219
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,713,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Light Reading FUN!, March 24, 2003

By 

Tom Kane (Worthington, Mass.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quick Hits: A Brief Collection of Black & Blue Gridiron Haiku (Paperback)

Sure this is not pitch perfect Haiku - but if I read the author correctly - he calls his work popcorn poetry and seventeen syllable short poem structure. These are seventeen syllable snap-shots of the game of football - so in that light I forgive his "out of the box" thinking when it comes to his brand of western style haiku. If you are looking for light reading without anal retentive conditioning about how things should be done then you can't miss with this ditty...

1.0 out of 5 stars an insult to haiku, football and publishing itself!, October 30, 2002

By 

thetwonky (Northridge, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quick Hits: A Brief Collection of Black & Blue Gridiron Haiku (Paperback)

As an avid haiku poet and football fanatic, I could not wait to read this collection. Unfortunately, Mattia should be benched, as he fumbles on EVERY SINGLE VERSE in this self-published book. It seems he knows very little about haiku. He embraces the classical 17 syllable form for each poem, but lacks kigo (if you want to consider the word "football" a season-word then I should say half have kigo), immediacy, and all of the other classical elements of this disciplined form. Most of the haiku are generic descriptions of the game of football itself, e.g. "it's a bag of pain/ it's a sack of sacrifice/ this game called football", that one being one of the few that does not seventeen words in its composition. I've read haiku from third graders that illustrated a better understanding of poetics as well as this form's roots. Some of the "poems" are shameless like this verse on the last page: "The END is now here/ I'll have more books out real soon/ Please give them a try." I have no idea why the word "end" is in caps, but most verses within have this peculiar feature. Furthermore, the font used for all of the verses is fuzzy and not very pleasant to look at. Finally, in Mattia's insufferable first-person bio, he claims to recognize Zen in haiku, yet goes on to call it "poetic popcorn" and the "cotton candy of communications." Huh? He also states that he hopes to be "the dynamic vehicle that delivers" this poetic form to the western world, proclaiming himself "the Bruce Lee of Haiku"!! Where has Mattia been for the last 40 years!?! If one wants to learn from the true Haiku ambassadors, please read R.H. Blyth, Harold G. Henderson & William J. Higginson.