Kevin J. Mackey's Week - Book Review: Haiku Through a Lens

Understand why the fuss, HERE.
Picture credits on this post.

To close up Kevin J. Mackey's Week, check out the review of his book "Haiku Through a Lens" that just came out and you can buy on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you care to, his week also includes an interview and an awesome guest post where he talks more about his writing. 

Now, please note that it's not because I'm grateful to Kevin for his help that I'm not observing my review policy to the letter. Just saying. 

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Haiku Through a Lens, by Kevin J Mackey, is a collection of poems inspired by photos taken with the author's cell phone. This is all but a pretentious book. The pictures are simple and the poems reach out to the reader, in a warm and friendly way, such as:


Displayed - before all
A painted reality
Tell me - aren't they all?

Kevin shares his wisdom too, when talking to us:

Respite from the rain 

Fill your lungs with breath, with warmth

And your heart also 

There are also many references to the nature and seasons, anecdotes of life and traveling, as well as metaphors that mix these elements to others. There's a good connection between the pictures and the poems inspired by them, making the reading very pleasant. As with any haiku collection, I'd suggest you make a pause between one poem and the other. Do as he advises and take a deep breath, feel the wind on your face or the warmth of your body. You won't regret it. 


That's a recommend. 




Note: Haiku is a fixed form of poetry. Although one of its most important elements is its metrics, I did not analyze it in my review.

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Kevin J Mackey is native Irish but now lives in the far drier climate of the San Francisco Bay Area. He reads widely - "whatever may be found between book covers" - but has a particular fondness for science fiction and poetry. He has had both flash and short fiction published in 2010 and 2011.

He also published "Haiku - Through a Lens", a collection of haiku and photographs on the themes of Light, Darkness, Travel and Seasons. He says he "follows in his father's ink-splotches"