Fear of Dancing: The Red Moon Anthology 2013 ed. by Jim Kacian (2014)

The annual collection of the best in haiku-related writing.

Poetry Review: Fear of Dancing is the 18th edition of this annual compilation. Poets as varied as Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, Etheridge Knight, and Sonia Sanchez have written books of haiku. Poets such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams have written poems influenced by haiku. I try to "sell" haiku and its relatives as an adult art form (for some of us it's how we learned to count syllables in elementary school). It's a way to briefly express one's creativity, the talent required dependent more on one's powers of observation than on sitzfleisch. For those who enjoy reading or writing haiku it may increase mindfulness, awareness, and closeness to nature or the world around us. A perfect form for walkers and those who may "feel" more than philosophize. One can employ the 5/7/5 syllabic form but there's no requirement. It's a very democratic art form. I often think of how Emily Dickinson could find the universe in her minute observations. But enough of my mild evangelism. Fear of Dancing is much like the previous collections, always of high quality and excellently produced. There are 154 poems here from various publications around the world throughout the year, varied as can be. From the gently humorous title piece: "writing cursive/my unspoken fear/of dancing", to the more poignant: "but stop/the old man/never gets on". Other favorites were "unpicked apples/we promise/to keep in touch" and "thistledown scatters the visible breeze". There are also five essays that can be a bit overly serious, but also highly informative and validating (other people are thoughtful about haiku!). They cover subjects from English versus Latin roots in English-language haiku, an interview with scholar Makoto Ueda (who notes that ten million Japanese write haiku, which are published in over 800 "little magazines"), synesthesia, and modern or avant-garde forms. For anyone interested or curious about the various forms of haiku Fear of Dancing, or any of the annual editions (all are in print), is an invaluable resource and treasury.  [5★]