I Never Promised You a Cherry Orchard: Japanese Short-Form Poetry, Served with a Twist

This chapbook of Japanese short-form poetry includes haiku, senryu, tanka and haiga, illustrated throughout with my color photographs. Taken as a whole, the collection of nearly 70 brief poems and 25 pictures traces a larger life-journey, ranging geographically from New York City to the Catskill Mountains, then to the rugged Bold Coast of DownEast Maine. On the way, the elements shine a light on moments of discovery, appreciation, love, loss—in nature, and with our various relations: human, animal, vegetable, mineral.

How does a book like this come about? I started writing tiny poems a dozen years ago, at first to recover from having generated a 50,000-word NaNoWriMo novel manuscript in 30 days. After that torrent of prose had exhausted itself—and me—I couldn't stand to jot down even a few thoughts in a journal! So I began playing with haiku in English as a shorthand aide-mémoire. As a love affair grew, I began writing poems in other traditional Japanese forms--senryu, tanka--and also creating photo-haiga, which combines a picture with a poem in typographic calligraphy.

"I Never Promised You a Cherry Orchard’ was a working title with a desire to create it for over a decade. As the book gradually took shape on the page during the pandemic quarantine of 2020-21, the individual poetic and photo elements began to suggest a larger story, in the outward movement from Manhattan to the mid-Hudson Valley, and now to a small lobster fishing town on the Maine coast—and an inner movement as well. I had a wonderful time designing the book from cover to cover, too.

If you're drawn to "Cherry Orchard," please also check out my set of Haiga Greetings art cards here in the shop!

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A Sampling of REVIEWS & PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

o “Exactly the right words in exactly the right place! [headline]: I find I must reshuffle the positions of my Haiku Gods and put Ms. Woerner at the top. –T.A. McLaughlin, author of the acclaimed sci-fi/fantasy series The Love of the Tayamni

o “This little book of poetry is packed with delightful verse…I enjoyed the journey from melancholy to whimsical to stoic, and more….[It] uniquely encapsulates the poet’s life while also welcoming everyone in. I encourage you to go. —Allison Wells, Senior Director of Communications & Public Affairs, National Resources Council of Maine

o “Fun Strange Landscapes [headline] … an entertaining read that stands up well to scrutiny—a stylishly produced, poetic reflexion of the author’s geographic surroundings and related intimate moments over time.” R.W. Watkins, Editor/Publisher, Eastern Structures
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Author bio:

Writer, editor, singer and educator Danielle Woerner, a Philadelphia native, has lived in New York City, the mid-Hudson Valley of NY, and now Milbridge, ME, where she and her husband Claude Johnson co-founded the Sunrise County Arts Institute in 2014 to serve Maine's DownEast-Acadia region.

Her haiku and senryu have been published in the arts and culture magazine "Chronogram"; the "Three Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers" (Resolute Bear Press, 2017); and the 2022 online anthology of "sakura" (cherry blossom) haiku created by the Consul-General of Japan in Toronto. She is a regular contributor to the journal "Eastern Structures," dedicated to traditional Asian forms of poetry in English. As a journalist, Danielle's features and op-ed pieces have appeared in "Classical Singer," "New Music Connoisseur," "Hudson Valley Magazine" and "Newsweek." She wrote for several years for the "Woodstock Times" in NY, and her reporting for weekly newspapers in Maine was recognized in 2018 by the National Federation of Press Women. She's a member of the Advisory Board of the Florence Belsky Foundation.

Danielle is also a BMI-affiliated songwriter, and the principal artist and executive producer of two acclaimed CDs of 20th-century American art song and chamber music on the Albany and Parnassus labels. (See these on this Etsy shop too!) She holds a B.A. in Music from Bard College and a Master's Certificate in Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music's Berkleemusic division. She joined the Hudson Valley Haiku-kai in 2013. "I Never Promised You a Cherry Orchard" is her first published collection of poems.


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NOTES TO CUSTOMERS:

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