Lewis G. Alexander - Hokku & Other Poems

Lewis G. Alexander - Hokku & Other Poems
Public Domain Poets #14 | Publicdomainpoets.com

Containing all of Alexander's poetry, originally published between 1923-1927 in various journals and anthologies, including 52 hokku and tanka, a short essay on hokku, a handful of other poems (both rhymed and unrhymed). New edition designed and edited by Dick Whyte.

Like cherry blossoms
Dancing with the passing wind-
My shattered hopes.

Lewis G. Alexander (1898-1945) was born in Washington D.C. and attended Howard University, and later the University of Pennsylvania, both known for their support of African American students. Alexander started writing poetry at the age of 19, and was one of the earliest non-Japanese poets to specialise in English-language tanka and haiku, studying with John Gould Fletcher, and drawing on the work of Yone Noguchi, alongside translators like W.G. Aston and Basil Hall Chamberlain, for inspiration.

Cold against the sky
The blue jays cried at dawning.
The larks where are they?
Heavily upon the air
My ears tuned in to listen.

Alexander would go on to publish in numerous well-known arts and poetry magazines throughout the 1920s, including 'The Crisis', 'Opportunity', and 'Fire!!' (etc.), Alexander was also a playwright, director, actor, and costume designer, appearing in the Ethiopian Art Theatre group's productions of Oscar Wilde's 'Salome', and Shakespeare's 'The Comedy of Errors', among other things.

The moonlight:
Juice flowing from an over-ripe pomegranate
bursting

The cossack-crested palm trees:
motionless

The leopard-spotted shade:
inciting fear
silence seeds sewn . . .

Public Domain Press is dedicated to producing new editions of out-of-print poetry, particularly with regard to compressed & fragmented 'free verse' from the late-1800s & early-1900s. All poems start as facsimiles - to preserve original fonts - which are cleaned up, edited, and spaciously laid-out, adorned with illustrations, and ornaments from the books and magazines they originally appeared in. These are not simply "reprints" of previously existing books, but newly crafted collections, lovingly edited from public domain material, for the serious poetry lover.