Emerging surrealist writer Pete O'Brien notes that Richard Wright (1908-1960) has never been surpassed for his haikus, published in Haiku: This Other World. In his own compositions, Pete usually follows the form whereby the first and third lines have five syllables and the second has seven syllables. Here, the first and second lines introduce distinct elements, while the third is their congress. Haiku Wonder contains over eight hundred O'Brien haikus (some of these are variants). Now the plight of the natural world is on Pete's mind, and he is healed daily in his meditations on it and on mundanity, as he is by his daily walk in the woods. And so too he finds salvation in roaring wranglestamples, towering basketball players with Saskatchewan just above their heads, and light blue elephants rarely to be seen loitering at airports. O'Brien's wit, poet's eye, pithy sermons, and spiky suggestions is just what is wanted to jumpstart the idling imaginations of amateur loafers and give readers in general something robust and grand to enjoy directly.
