Description
Baseball is a uniquely apt subject for haiku. Outfield Epiphanies, a collection of 66 haiku poems by Rich Puerzer, explores the fleeting moments and enduring feelings one can discover in baseball. These deceptively simple poems draw on observations from backyards, Little League fields, minor league ballparks, and road trips to Cooperstown, while evoking the mundanity, tenderness, and beauty found in the game of baseball—and in life.
“In Outfield Epiphanies, Rich Puerzer achieves the ideal marriage of form and subject, as haiku, like baseball, conceals behind its apparent simplicity a world of complexity and nuance. Like Ichiro, these haiku range gracefully, quietly, and playfully. I recommend tucking this volume into your pocket and pulling it out between innings to revel in its images, its emotion, and its perfect small revelations.”
– Andrew Forbes, Author of Field Work and McCurdle’s Arm
I was hooked from the very first haiku:
Opening Day
faith is evidence
of things not seen
– John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball
“Haiku and baseball have a lot in common. They are both beautiful, minimalist, complex, profound, and deceptively simple. Haiku and baseball both provide a window into life itself, for those who are able to see it. Every time you watch a baseball game, there is a chance to see something you have never seen before. Rich Puerzer’s baseball haiku give readers a chance to see and feel this baseball in a way that is both fresh and new, but also timeless.”
– Tim Wiles, Co-editor Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems
“Rich has an eye for the small ‘unimportant’ things, which is really what us baseball lovers live for. Not so much the game-ending Grand Salami, but the seagulls waiting impatiently for the bit of hot dog bun under a bleacher.”
– Scott McCaughey, The Baseball Project
“Haiku is small ball. Sometimes the beauty of baseball is captured in the bunt. In Outfield Epiphanies Rich Puerzer is as skillful on the page as Phil Rizzuto was with a bat. Puerzer is a lover of the game. Did it start in third grade?
Outfield Epiphanies is a book of meditations and memories. Puerzer remembers Forbes Field, Cooperstown, and Ichiro Suzuki. His poetry examines the game from numerous perspectives. This book is a celebration of everything that is wonderful about baseball.”
– E. Ethelbert Miller, Writer and Literary Activist, Author of If God Invented Baseball
