Here is the perfect gift for a creative friend or relative who seems to have everything. It is a boxed kit containing a 64-page book by poet and editor Lonnie Hull DuPont titled Footprints in the Snow, 50 word tiles along with a bag to hold them, and a blank journal for writing down haikus. There are approximately six million active haiku poets in Japan, and many of them pursue this art form as a spiritual practice.
In the enclosed paperback, DuPont describes the six essential features of haiku, a seventeen-syllable poem divided into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables each. They provide a snapshot of a moment, are concerned with nature and the seasons, are short yet evocative. As DuPont notes: "Haiku gives us boundaries. Within those boundaries we can feel a compressed moment, a beautiful moment, a painful moment, a painterly moment."
Pick a few words: silent, fall, smoke, seagull, rain, chirp. Let them serve as a spur for your imagery. Stay with the moment. Unspool your sense of wonder. Bow down amidst the mysteries. Play with all the possibilities. Enjoy The Haiku Box.