Dr. Suzuki admits that there’s no difference between the before and after of Zen practice save for the fact that after studying Zen one may find “the feet a little bit off the ground.” Well, that’s the uncanny, enchanting effect of reading Daniel Bergg’s poems: you read these bone-lean and yet humming works and find yourself hovering. Haiku and Other Occupations uses—with both startling playfulness and startling directness—a Williams-like this-is-just-to-say language in order to wonder about love and belonging and friendship and suffering. Bergg’s “haikus” are image-machines but they are marked by a menacing world-awareness too. So we get the requisite Basho lily pads but we also get mold and bone saws and skin cells and astroturf. I think this is an intrepid and vital book.

—Jake Kennedy, author of The Rublev Horse

published May 2022 in a print run of 100 copies

ISBN 978-1-9994276-7-2