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earthshine


earthshine

HAIKU BY CHUCK BRICKLEY

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earthshine


earthshine

HAIKU BY CHUCK BRICKLEY

Now in its 5th printing!

EARTHSHINE—Winner of the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2017; the HSA Merit Book Award, Honorable Mention 2017; and HAIKU CANADA’S inaugural Marianne Bluger Book Award 2020, Honourable Mention.

click black button . . .

In this stunning collection, Chuck Brickley transforms the ordinary into the magical, and casts the magical in a new light. For those who still do not ‘get’ haiku, let them open this book to any page.
— Billie Wilson, Associate Editor, The Heron's Nest
Every poem is brilliant, and I do mean brilliant . . . [EARTHSHINE is] destined to be a classic.
— Christopher Herold, Founding Editor, The Heron's Nest
If one is looking for a haiku model, one needn’t look further than EARTHSHINE.
— Paul Miller, editor Modern Haiku, from review in MH49.1
[EARTHSHINE is] the most impressive single author haiku collection I’ve read in the English language.
— Paul Chambers, editor Wales Haiku Journal
[EARTHSHINE] is a marvelous collection . . . full of surprises, discoveries, and significance of being alive. Brickley does an outstanding job presenting moments as . . . natural, real and emotionally provocative.
— Randy Brooks, publisher Brooks Books, from review in Frogpond 41.1
Chuck Brickley’s sensibility and heart are enriched by quietude. Broadly themed around nature and family, EARTHSHINE leaves an emotional space for the reader to occupy, the deceptive simplicity of phrasing deepening each haiku’s effect.
— Bruce Ross, Editor, Haiku Moment
EARTHSHINE is a treasury of luminous delights! Han Shan and Basho read these poems in heaven.
— E.H., Green Apple Books, San Francisco
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Winter Darkness


Every haiku I write is an answer to the question:

"What's an existentialist like you doing in a church like this?"

             - cb

Winter Darkness


Every haiku I write is an answer to the question:

"What's an existentialist like you doing in a church like this?"

             - cb

 
winter darkness
a car follows its lights
over the hill
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Winter


 

 

 

 

Winter


 

 

 

 

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forsythia


"How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?"

          - William Blake

 

 

 

forsythia


"How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?"

          - William Blake

 

 

 

 

forsythia
the widow's blinds
part slightly

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widow


 

 

 

 

widow


 

 

 

 

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Last Lilac


 

 

 

 

 

 

"If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Lilac


 

 

 

 

 

 

"If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

last lilac
the bee's shadow slips
to a lower leaf
 
 

flagstone moss
a daddy-long-legs steps
from dewdrop to dewdrop

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last


 

 

 

 

last


 

 

 

 

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borges quote


"I have done my best . . . to write straightforward stories. I do not dare state that they are simple; there isn't anywhere on earth a single page or single word that is, since each thing implies the universe, whose most obvious trait is complexity."

 

- from preface to "Doctor Brodie's Report" by Jorge Luis Borges

            

borges quote


"I have done my best . . . to write straightforward stories. I do not dare state that they are simple; there isn't anywhere on earth a single page or single word that is, since each thing implies the universe, whose most obvious trait is complexity."

 

- from preface to "Doctor Brodie's Report" by Jorge Luis Borges

            

dry creekbed
the gleam of a bullet shell
the only sound


                                        deserted schoolyard
                                        the fence he climbed over
                                        to Iraq

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borges


 

 

 

 

borges


 

 

 

 

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moonlit


The master, still: Basho, whose haiku range from the classic ideal of selfless objectivity, to the romantic stance of self-involved subjectivity.

You can go to the pine or bamboo. But not until you have "plunged deep enough into the object" will you discover "something like a hidden glimmering there".

The thing in itself,

in you,

in . . .

 

- cb, "Canadian Haiku Anthology" 1979

 

 

            

 

moonlit


The master, still: Basho, whose haiku range from the classic ideal of selfless objectivity, to the romantic stance of self-involved subjectivity.

You can go to the pine or bamboo. But not until you have "plunged deep enough into the object" will you discover "something like a hidden glimmering there".

The thing in itself,

in you,

in . . .

 

- cb, "Canadian Haiku Anthology" 1979

 

 

            

 

 
she grows quiet
the drops of milk on my wrist
moonlit
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moon


 

 

 

 

moon


 

 

 

 

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Smacked


"I saw a man, he danced with his wife"

- Lorenz Hart

Smacked


"I saw a man, he danced with his wife"

- Lorenz Hart

 
smacked upside the head
by her snowball . . .
still in love
 
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End


End



EARTHSHINE—in its 4th printing


 

Snapshot Press Books
United Kingdom

The author reading from EARTHSHINE on YouTube . . .

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