asked how long –
the general’s hands spread
wider

–Barry George,
Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku (2010), Accents Publishing

Wrecking Ball is par of the Spalding Series which features authors from the Spalding University MFA in Writing program in Louisville, Kentucky.

“The haiku in this book blend a distinctly urban content with the nature-oriented perspective of traditional haiku. “What I admire about Barry George’s poetry is the possibility for human utterance within a contemporary scene – not unlike the lyric poem in modern English – explored in Japanese short forms. In three lines he paints a scene as contemporary as Edward Hopper, strikes notes as American as Aaron Copland. George focuses our attention visually and aurally, and thus each haiku is a cinematic moment casting an afterimage long after the poem closes. Even those who are not familiar with the ever-evolving Japanese short form will find Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haikuuniversal in compression and resonance.”

– Jeanie Thompson,
author of The Seasons Bear Us and Executive Director, The Alabama Writers’ Forum

Barry George is a regular contributor to leading international haiku journals. His poems have been published in Japanese, French, German, and Romanian translations; and have appeared in the anthologies A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku and The New Haiku, as well as seven of the annual Best Haiku collections published by Red Moon Press. A recipient of the 2009 AWP Intro Poets Awards, he has also won numerous Japanese short-form competitions, including the Gerald R. Brady Contest and The Mainichi Daily News Contest. He has twice been a featured poet at the Robert Frost Poetry Festival in Key West. A graduate of Spalding University’s MFA in Writing program, he lives and teaches in Philadelphia.