to the small poem and the quiet voice within

ronald baatz | white tulips

Ronald Baatz

if I make old age
I’ll give up the pen
take up watercolors

I balance a pen
across my dry lips before
falling off to sleep

………………………………………….ah!
…………….today haiku come as easy
as picking them off a small fruit tree

[from WHITE TULIPS, ninety-nine haiku, The Tideline Press, 2003 out-of-print]

(Tideline Press) White Tulips. Ninety-nine haiku by Ronald Baatz. 2003. n.p. 5.25″ x 4″. Double title page fold-out. Single and fold-out pages alternate throughout the book. Designed, handset in Elizabeth and Carolus type, printed on dampened, vintage Barcham Green Hayle paper, and bound by Leonard Seastone. Cream wrappers with blue title on spine and three cream strips of ribbon as a feature of the binding. One in an edition of 30 copies, signed by Ronald Baatz and Leonard Seastone.

4 Comments

  1. Gar

    Concise, balanced, and perceptive. Beautifully conceived and written. Thanks for this and so many others.

  2. Jean Casey

    i think i get it…these are tweets…!!!

  3. Norbert Blei

    No, these came long before “tweets” (back to the consciousness of Basho) and will live long after the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of ‘tweets.’

  4. Bruce Hodder

    Ronald has long been the American haiku master, though he’s too modest to admit it.

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