This is kind of like a pop-up book for adults. An Andrews-McMeel Publishing concoction, you already know that it’s going to be graphically busy, but this book not only features a lot of color and graphics, but it has origami, often birds, posted in, and the table of contents is a separate card inserted into an envelope in front. So it keeps your attention busy for sure, perhaps distracted from the poetry.
The poetry collects works from mostly Chinese and Japanese sources from across the millenia. If you’re familiar with Chinese and Japanese poetry, you know in the shorter forms it tends to be a bit airy, like the haiku: A bit of imagery to dwell on, not a lot of word play, of course, because that would be lost in translation anyway.
So the book was a quick read, a bit interesting because it’s different than the poetry I write, and I don’t think it will influence me a whole lot in imagery or pasting papercrafts into books. But you never know; it certainly cannot limit my sales any more than being a self-published poet already does.
