JOE MASSEY makes his small poems in Eureka, California, and each one in this little chapbook cries "Eureka!" at its closure. Massey writes seamless little post-modern "haiku." Eighteen poems full of dandelions, crickets, sparrows and church bells, rich with a quiet wit as in this one:
Isn't that cricket
getting
tired?
Massey's forceful images move so lightly across and down the page that each poem's surprise works at many levels—image, sound, and observation of moment:
Crickets?—
no.
Refrig-
erator motor
staccato.
One final little poem to demonstrate Massey's mastery of the concentrated revelation so easily missed, but once seen, heard, and felt—never forgotten:
Gust of litter—now
the light's
obvious.
Will you ever view litter blowing in the sunlight wind the same again?