Alexis Rotella
Control Freak
Eagle
emptying
space
I receive a text from a poet up north who is attending a poetry workshop taught by a famous Japanese master. He thinks one of my haiku is pure zen. He says other things, too, but she won’t tell–according to her, my ego couldn’t handle it.
a lonely echo in the bark of a dog
About the writer:
Alexis Rotella has been writing Japanese poetry forms in English since the late 1970’s and has won many awards, including the Kusamakura Annual Haiku Contest (1999) where Rotella traveled to Kumamoto, Japan. Author of dozens of books, Rotella’s two latest received the Touchstone Distinguished Book Award–UnSealing Our Secrets (curation of MeToo stories, 2018) and Scratches on the Moon (Haibun, 2019). In June 2019, Rotella’s body of work was included in the American Haiku Archives (Sacramento, California).
Image: Raging Moon by Pavel Brázda (1926-2017). Mezzotint. No size specified. Circa 1975. By free license.
