“January sunset / putting aside her journal / to peel an orange”

Peeling an Orange, a collection of haiku by Peggy Heinrich, published by MET Press, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Offering a modern approach to haiga, the juxtaposition of haiku and art work, Peeling an Orange combines poet Peggy Heinrich’s exquisite haiku with botanist/photographer John Bolivar’s stunning black-and-white photographs. Both poems and photographs carry the reader through the seasons of a life as well as the seasons of the year to produce an effect that is more than the sum of its parts.

Heinrich's award-winning work has been described, according to one editor, as always finely rendered and thought through. The final haiku in Peeling an Orange, “around the fire / the widening circle / of silence,” was cited by noted artist and teacher Kaji Aso as “an original, neither a second-hand Basho nor Buson, [in which] a basic sense of human life and warmth of heart is well captured.”

A runner-up in the Nikon International Photo Contest, John Bolivar has won many awards and is currently working on a book of his garden photography. His work has graced the ads of many commercial clients including Patagonia, UPS, REI plus Outside, National Geographic, Sierra and many other magazines.

“Poet Peggy Heinrich is an insightful and empathetic companion as she invites the reader to travel with her through the seasons of haiku. Her poems are marked by intricate layers of juxtaposition: city and country, sun and rain, solitude and company, humor and poignancy, and above all a deep appreciation of the present steeped in the remembrance of things past. Peeling an Orange is like an enso, offering the reader a complete journey from the ripples in a spring pond to deep winter’s ‘widening circle/of silence’.” — Pamela Miller Ness, Past President, Haiku Society of America

“The poems in Peeling an Orange can only be written by a master poet and Peggy Heinrich is one. This book captivates the reader with its haiku & senryu, and just when you think that it can’t get any better, it does. Over the years I’ve thinned out my bookshelves, but this book is a keeper and it is wonderful to have a collection of such work in a single volume.” — Stanford M. Forrester, editor of bottle rockets: a collection of short verse

$11.95) Paperback perfect bound 84 pages Publisher Modern English Tanka Press Ships in 3-5 business days Copyright ©2009 Available from http://stores.lulu.com/modernenglishtanka or from the author at 3400 Paul Sweet Road, A317, Santa Cruz, CA 95065: $14, inc. S&H