ORS
Author: Dan Schwerin
Publisher: Red Moon Press (2015)
The title of Dan Schwerin’s first full-length book of haiku, ORS, raises many questions. The poems supply only some of the answers, because the poet doesn’t claim to have them all. Rather, these poems chronicle his search. These are not easy haiku, certainly not hearts-and-flowers verses or classic Kyoshi-style "flower-bird-wind-moon" haiku. They are mostly mood pieces in which Schwerin demonstrates an uncanny skill in evoking the emptiness, loneliness, and isolation of the landscape, physical and psychic, that stretches from where we are to the distant horizon and on into the boundless:
home hospice
a prairie sky
at the window
you let it go
too far
winter stars
the loss of our farm land keeping the moon