Each of the poems in Noble’s latest collection is seventeen syllables, a kind of haiku. Nobel explains that these “short hairs,” or pseudo haikus, are not in fact traditional haikus. Rather he prefers to call them logopoeic haikus, even though this is a contradiction in terms. Logopoeia, of course, being Ezra Pound’s term and of the three possible dominances (the other two of the standard ménage à trois being phanoand melopoeia) he claimed logopoeia to be the riskiest— a tending to philosophy and a leaving of poetry. Continue reading →