Poetry Friday--George Swede

I have been reading the haiku of George Swede for many years. I've corresponded (as in sending submissions) with him in his capacity as editor of the Haiku Society of America's journal, frogpond. Somehow I missed the fact that he was also accomplished in other forms of poetry!

Browsing through Songs of Myself: An Anthology of Poems and Art compiled by Georgia Heard [Mondo Publishing, 2000] I came across the following poem by Swede:

Every Morning

Every morning
I awake
full of dust
and odors

As if
no one has
lived in me
for years

And
every morning
I throw open
all my windows
and doors

Clean
and fumigate
myself

As if
I were just
moving in

Nice, isn't it! The poem is paired well with Running House/#4862 by artist Nicholas Wilton.

A funky animated version of a haiku by George Swede is available here.

To read more of Swede's haiku, find a copy of Cor van den Heuvel's The Haiku Anthology: Haiku and Senryu in English [W.W. Norton, 1999], the best all-around collection of English language haiku.

This week's Poetry Friday Round-Up is being held at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, and next week it will be right here at Random Noodling, so plan to stop by.

Photo from the Brooks Books Haiku website