Sonora Spring Haiku

About the Book

Sonora Spring Haiku, by poet and neuroscientist Judith Lauter, provides a photographic and poetic account of three spring months in the lush Sonoran desert near Tucson AZ. In a radical departure from the natural settings of most ‘classical’ haiku – a world of misty wetness, cranes, pagodas and perhaps a solitary, aged man – these poems evoke a stony landscape of space, sun, and sharp edges. Such an extremely wide range of application for the form shows us that poetry is perhaps the most flexible of the literary arts, capable of engaging almost any experience or geography.

About the Author

Judith Lauter was born in Austin, Texas. When she was nine, her family moved to Michigan where she later met her husband, the poet Ken Lauter, in a poetry-writing seminar at the University of Michigan taught by Donald Hall (US Poet Laureate, 2006-7). The couple has subsequently lived in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, and now make their home in Nacogdoches TX. Judith holds a BA in English literature, three master's degrees (creative writing, information science, and linguistics), and a PhD in communication sciences (Washington University in St. Louis). She taught and directed human neuroscience laboratories at major universities for more than three decades, before retiring in 2012 and returning to her first love, poetry. In addition to scientific articles, chapters, and books (including How is Your Brain Like a Zebra? Xlibris, 2008, www.zebrabrain.com), she has published poems in a number of journals, and won two Hopwood Awards for poetry (University of Michigan), an Academy of American Poets prize (University of Denver), and the Norma Lowry Memorial Prize (Washington University). She has two previous books of poetry with Xlibris, both 2013: A Year of Haiku, and Light from the Left; poems on paintings by Rembrandt (www.LightFromTheLeft.com).