Sixty Years of Poems by Joe

Sixty Years of Poems by Joe presents a group of poems that reflect the poet's work over the last six decades, ranging from classically structured poems to prose verse, and variations of these. This selection presents the work of a poet who is a lawyer, a novelist (Sanctified, 2013), a farmer, and a great grandfather, but always a poet.

The book contains 41 poems, of which 15 are Haiku. "Haiku is special. It has tight parameters that force the poet to think and explore. This usually results in a satisfying poem, but occasionally it produces a profound thought bomb that takes poet and reader to another place," Joe says in the introduction to the Haiku section. Now in his late 70's, he only in the last few years began writing in the Haiku form.

"It's amazing how expansive a poem of three lines with a total of seventeen syllables can be. For example consider these two poems:

She planted an elm.
It grew and shaded my yard.
Then she chopped it down.

and

Bright white clouds roll in,
against a vast azure sky.
Then the dark clouds come.

"The three short lines in the first poem cover human experience of many years, and the human condition in general, and precisely the same can be said of the second poem. And yet what is invoked is not spoken about directly. But we feel it and we know it. For me that is the wonder of Haiku."