homeeditorsreviewsessaysmhbooks issues

 

Volume 36.1
Spring 2005

book review:

Making Way
by George Dorsty

 

reviewed by Paul Miller

Making Way, by George Dorsty (Greenfield, Mass.: Tribe Press, 2004). 2 pages, 15½ x 4½, letterpress printed, hand bound, accordion folded. No ISBN. $4.00 postpaid from the author at PO Box 33, Jamesport, NY 11947.

Making Way is the second volume in editor Vincent Tripi’s Pinch Book series and contains nine poems by a poet who is gaining a reputation for solid work. George Dorsty’s poems do what the best haiku do: they allow the reader an effortless entrance to a scene through objective details and then the room to move about independently. The title poem,

making way
for others
—autumn trail

is a nice nod to Bashô, but also reveals something about the poet and then asks something of its reader. The poems in the chapbook are different enough not to be repetitive in such a small collection. Yet they all celebrate life and allow us to get comfortable within them. Or in the case of the last poem,

the mountain
behind the monastery—
just sitting

allow us to just be. I find this poem particularly appealing and wonder exactly what or who is the mountain?

A fine addition to a fine series.

 

 

 

 

©2005 Modern Haiku • PO Box 68 • Lincoln, IL 62656