Maple-Colored Moon

The poems in Maple-Colored Moon are literary in style and are thus distinct from other types of haiku I write, such as senryu (satiric, humorous haiku on human nature) and humorous haiku on miscellaneous topics which haiku purists call "pseudohaiku." As readers will see, almost all of my haiku are written in neoclassical style. World Haiku Review, the magazine of the World Haiku Club, characterizes neoclassical haiku as poems that use "stringent kigo" (kigo is the Japanese word for season words) or abide by the traditional 5-7-5 syllabication.1 My haiku generally use a pattern of three short/long/short lines, do not exceed seventeen syllables altogether, and almost always begin with a kigo, such as melting snow (spring), "summer river" (summer), "harvested field" (autumn), and "winter wind" (winter).