Robert Witmer has lived in Japan for 45 years. A semi-retired college professor, he writes poems in the Japanese forms of haiku and tanka, as well as free verse and occasionally metered verse. The several years he spent traveling through Central and South Asia have had a profound influence on his work, opening his eyes to the marvelous diversity of cultures and the wonders of the natural world. He believes in the power of the written word to engage the imagination and to bring people together, and, as the poet Wallace Stevens once said, "to stimulate the sense of living and being alive." more...