Peeling an Orange Haiku Collection by Peggy Heinrich, Published by MET Press

Peeling an Orange, Peggy Heinrich’s fine collection of haiku, showcases the exquisite work of this widely published and award-winning poet. These poems carry the reader through the seasons of a life as well as the seasons of the year. Equally evocative are the stunning black-and-white photographs by John Bolivar, a prize-winning photographer based in Seattle.

Baltimore, Maryland – November 6, 2009 – Peeling an Orange by Peggy Heinrich has been published as a trade paperback by MET Press of Baltimore, Maryland. "January sunset / putting aside her journal / to peel an orange" This fine collection of haiku showcases the exquisite work of Peggy Heinrich, a widely published and award-winning poet. These poems carry the reader through the seasons of a life as well as the seasons of the year. Heinrich’s work has been described as insightful and empathetic and, according to one editor, always finely rendered and thought through. The final haiku in Peeling an Orange: "around the fire / the widening circle / of silence" was cited by well-known artist and teacher Kaji Aso as "an original, neither a second-hand Basho nor Buson, [in which] a basic sense of human life and warmth of heart is well captured." Equally evocative are the stunning black-and-white photographs by John Bolivar, a prize-winning photographer based in Seattle.

"Poet Peggy Heinrich is an insightful and empathetic companion as she invites the reader to travel with her through the seasons of haiku. Her poems are marked by intricate layers of juxtaposition: city and country, sun and rain, solitude and company, humor and poignancy, and above all a deep appreciation of the present steeped in the remembrance of things past. Peeling an Orange is like an enso, offering the reader a complete journey from the ripples in a spring pond to deep winter’s ‘widening circle/of silence’."

— Pamela Miller Ness, Past President, Haiku Society of America

"The poems in Peeling An Orange can only be written by a master poet and Peggy Heinrich is one. This book captivates the reader with its haiku & senryu, and just when you think that it can’t get any better, it does. Over the years I’ve thinned out my bookshelves, but this book is a keeper and it is wonderful to have a collection of such work in a single volume."

— Stanford M. Forrester, editor of bottle rockets: a collection of short verse
　

Peggy Heinrich began exploring haiku thirty-five years ago. Her haiku have appeared in almost every haiku journal here and in Japan, from the early days of Dragonfly to the latest website and in many anthologies, including three Red Moon anthologies; The New Haiku by Snapshot Press, the Basho Festival Haiku Anthology and How to Haiku by Bruce Ross. Among her many awards are the Haiku Society of America’s Henderson Award and the Robert Spiess Memorial Award. Also, she was a runner-up in the giant 1988 Japan Air Lines contest and a prize-winner in Ashiya’s International Haiku Festival. Her mini-chapbook, "A Patch of Grass," was published by High/Coo Press in 1984. Besides haiku, Peggy enjoys writing tanka and longer poems, some of which were published in 2006 in her collection, A Minefield of Etceteras.