Author Description

Evening in the Plaza contains forty-one haibun and forty-eight haiku, selected from the published writings of over a decade, by Jeffrey Woodward, a leading exponent and theorist of haibun, and founder and general editor of Haibun Today. The origins of haibun, or the wedding of prose and haiku, can be traced to 17th century Japan but this literary genre gradually fell out of favor and practice in its homeland; it has been revived and naturalized internationally by English-language poets in recent decades. "Potentially lost in Jeffrey Woodward's enduring advocacy of the haibun genre is the quality of his own work. No more. The pieces of this handsome collection, assembled from the past decade, exhibit the suppleness of his style, the probity of his thought, and the range of his affections. It isn't essential that a champion of a neglected genre be expert in it, but when he is, it lends credence to his claims of value. This volume will make certain those claims are taken very seriously." -Jim Kacian, Senior Editor, Contemporary Haibun