Pocket Change

Pocket Change: Towpath Anthology 2000, edited by Ellen Compton, Jim Kacian, and Jeff Witkin. Red Moon Press, 2000. 40 pages, 3.5 by 5 inches. ISBN 1-893959-12-0. $5.00 plus postage from Red Moon Press, P.O. Box 2461, Winchester, Virginia 22604-1661.

With the proliferation of regional haiku groups across the country in recent years, it’s no wonder that more and more of these groups have been producing anthologies of their members’ work. The Towpath Haiku Society [now just Towpath Haiku] is one such group, and has recently published Pocket Change. Towpath serves the Chesapeake watershed and has more than forty members from Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., although only fifteen of its members are represented here. Though the group formed in 1995, Pocket Change is its first collection, ably produced in a pocket-sized edition by Red Moon Press in red, blue, and black ink on each page. A mere 3.5 by 5 inches in size, the book’s forty pages present thirty-five poems at a pleasing pace of one per page. As a taste, here is the book’s title poem and two other standouts:

watching the girl

in a short tight skirt

I fondle my pocket change

Fred Donovan

custody hearing

seeing his arms cross

i uncross mine

Roberta Beary

a leaf falls—

the column of gnats

reassembles

Kristen Deming