A Seal Snorts Out the Moon

A Seal Snorts Out The Moon is a delightful year-long journey through the seasons. Though most collections of haiku follow this pattern A Seal Snorts Out The Moon differs in that it starts with the end of Winter rather than the beginning of Spring; a moot point perhaps but nonetheless an innovative approach and an indication of the poet's quirkiness. Far from irreverent, however, Colin Stewart Jones is clearly informed by Buson when he writes: at birdsong a horse clears his throat Many of Colin Stewart Jones' haiku are placed within a wild Hebridean landscape and these offer a marked contrast with those from the poet's more usual urban setting. However, for a poet who finds beauty in the everyday, commonplace and often mundane, his geographical positioning is secondary to the way in which he views the world: spring morning sunlight passing through my urine Colin Stewart Jones deftly manages to avoid any sentimentality and still take the reader through his year with all its ups and downs while keeping a child-like questioning innocence: where is heaven? the child in me pops seaweed As we have seen the poet is respectful and referencing of the genre in which he writes, yet Colin Stewart Jones is also a very modern haiku poet: L8 sumr sistrs rgu ovr a txt A Seal Snorts Out The Moon has all that one would expect from a haiku and even more - the black and white haiga are particularly enchanting - making this book highly recommended reading indeed.