Modern Haiku's reviews are of great interest, occupying almost a quarter of the magazine.
The reviewers are mostly well-known authors and editors.
Cor van den Heuvel reviews
Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac. Yes, that is "haikus" not the
expected "haiku."
Van den Heuvel wishes that the book's editor (Regina Weinreich)
had selected fewer of Kerouac's poems, excluding the weaker ones.
However, he highlights how the images in the best poems
"catch Kerouac, too, doing what he did best;
noticing the magical moments in our ordinary, everyday lives, and
capturing them in words."
William J. Higginson (author of several books on writing haiku)
spends three pages correcting
Hokku: Writing Traditional Haiku in English by David Coomler
and seven pages fixing
Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-On Guide
by Jane Reichhold.
Of the former, Higginson writes:
"Coomler's book not only attacks modern Japanese haiku,
but ignores all post-Blyth books and other resources."
Of the latter Higginson writes:
"there's at least as much trouble afoot in Writing and Enjoying Haiku
as in any other guide to haiku published recently."
However, he does praise Reichhold's on-line Web site for including
"a more helpful annotated list of haiku resources on the Web."
Six other books are reviewed, with quoted poems for the reader's own judgement.
Finally,
a handful of other books and booklets each get a paragraph or two in a "Briefly Noted" section.
Toward an Aesthetic for English-Language Haiku by Lee Gurga.
