Hanami

By Daryl Muranaka

Daryl Muranaka's poems in Hanami are expertly spun of delicate rhythms, potent imagery, and a fine twist of longing. They feel haunting and huge, while embodying a sense of precise particularity, and soulful inquiry. Muranaka's Japanese ancestry, experience and memory, mixing with American curiosities and landscapes, shape a strong sense of belonging in language - these are poems to be savored, and treasured. - Naomi Shihab Nye In his 1983 "Poetry and Ambition," Donald Hall complains that creative writing programs are mass-producing "McPoems" and that "every year, Ronald McDonald takes the Pulitzer." Although Daryl Muranaka did earn an MFA in the mid-1990s ("when workshops were taught / in an abandoned bank vault"), his are slow-cooked poems, poems readers will linger over, feast on. Daryl has taken the time needed to attune his ear to "delicate sounds so easily drowned / in the suburban silences." Take away the crumbs of appetizers; Hanami is the main course that we've been awaiting. - Tom C. Hunley, author of Plunk Hanami is like the first partridge of spring. It bodes hope and renewal, yet asks, how did you fare that long winter? I keep it on my window sill next to Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. - Jon Billman

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0692421114
• ISBN13: 9780692421116
• Release Date: April 2015
• Publisher: Aldrich Press
• Length: 94 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.2" x 6.0"