Ethiopian Time by Bob Lucky

Poetry, Haibun and Tanka
52 pages
5.5" x 7" single signature with hand sewn binding
Published December 2014

Gravity

Gravity was strong today. My feet barely left the earth. The sky was bird-less. Pied crows, wattled ibises, kites, all the birds, gathered on the soccer pitch and pecked at the turf. Clouds crashed around me, sank underground, giving me the impression, in spite of the effort needed to drag my soul all the way to dusk, that this could be heaven on earth. So I began to pay attention.

From Designer Dana Hoeschen:

This is the last poem in Bob Lucky's chapbook Ethiopian Time. On my first read through the manuscript I was struck by the breadth of the experience Bob relates. Then I read Gravity, and I began to pay attention.

Just how does one balance the familiar with the foreign? And just how different is ordinary depending on climate and culture?

The poems in Ethiopian Time are Haibun - prose poem and haiku or prose poem and tanka combinations. Bob uses this form effectively to contrast his observations and insights on everyday life in a foreign place. Bob uses and stretches the form to fit his experiences, providing another means of conveying the flexible necessity of life no matter where one lives.

Read Ethiopian Time, decide for yourself if there isn't more familiar than foreign in its pages.