PERISHABLE HAIKUS

Charles-Ernest Renard

Reciprocal

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A man plunged in.

Alas! I awaited in vain

a fish in the air.

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The Belgian Surrealist poet Charles-Ernest Renard realised that the surprise element of haiku made them an ideal vehicle for writing surreal verse, and he used them exclusively in his second and final anthology, complete with a suitably Surrealist title.

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The first English translation of a haiku book by a forgotten Belgian poet.