review of Awodey chapbook HEAD TO HEAD

The world of English language haiku is one fraught with friendly disputes over what rules apply when adapting such a distinctly Japanese form. Marc Awodey, Haiku Champion for the 2000 Poetry Slam Nationals, has forged his own path, dispensing with line or syllable counts, playing with line breaks and spacing, implying both the cadences of spoken American English, and the visual schemes of concrete poetry. One consequence is that a review quotation cannot always capture the impact of many of these unconventional poems. In ìThe lights/ of your far off city reflect/ across clouds/ and/ photographs,î the arrangement of the words imply the spiraling image of the cloud that appears in Chinese and Japanese art.