Last Train Home: an anthology of contemporary haiku, tanka, and rengay

LAST TRAIN HOME is an international collection of haiku and related poetry about trains and train travel. Edited by award-winning Canadian poet and children's book author Jacqueline Pearce, the anthology features close to 600 haiku, tanka, rengay, and haiku sequences by 193 poets from 22 different countries. REVIEWSFor those of us who love them, trains are a perfect subject for a poetry anthology. The many styles of freight and passenger cars roll and rumble through our lives, connecting the long past with meaningful stops along the way to here and now. A combination of sociability and solitude, train travel is poetry itself. Last Train Home is a procession of loving glimpses of the world from a moving platform. We are moved.This anthology, containing nearly 600 poems from 193 of the best contemporary writers of English-language haiku and tanka, reflects the railroad realities of twenty-two countries. The reader is offered vicarious views of this simultaneously old fashioned and of the moment means of transportation across five continents.steam train whistlethe aroma of Grandpa’spipe tobacco-Leanne Mumfordprairie darkness—what a child's breath revealson the train window-Chad Lee Robinsonnight train—flat cars haulingmoonlight-Keith Polette- John Stevenson, Managing Editor, The Heron’s NestExciting, wonderful, transportive. Amazing haiku adventures on the Last Train Home. Acclaimed poet and children’s book author, Jacqueline (Jacquie) Pearce, has woven together haiku, tanka and rengay capturing unforgettable train encounters from across the globe. The best train poets share their haiku moments. Whether emerging from a train tunnel, listening to the rumble of passing boxcars, having encounters with strangers or seeing reflections in a train window, this anthology captures extraordinary moments made simple through the art of haiku.A must buy for anyone who loves trains and travel adventure. Makes you want to hop on a train. A definitive and superbly crafted train haiku anthology.- Rich Schnell, Adirondack haiku poet, psychotherapist, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, train voyagerNostalgia is a deeply rooted emotion in all of us. My mother, who is 90 years old today, still talks about the excitement that spread through the whole country when India got her first passenger train, which ran between Bombay's Bori Bunder station and Thane on 16 April 1853 ... a story she often heard from her grandmother. Last Train Home, the title of this beautiful collection of train-related haiku, tanka and rengay, sums up the emotional quotient of this volume. The title serves as a semi-circle of a haiku, leaving so many things unsaid and whetting the reader’s appetite for pages and pages of poetry celebrating trains!This is an anthology that readers will want to own, as it has a lot to give with each subsequent reading.- Kala Ramesh, poet, editor, festival director, external faculty at the Symbiosis International University Pune, Editor-in-Chief of the award winning naad anunaad: an anthology of contemporary world haiku. Read more