Seeing into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright

Crews pairs sweeping photocollages with a dozen haiku written by Native Son author Wright during the final year of his life (he wrote some 4,000 haiku in total, 800 of which were later published, explains Crews in biographical notes). Candid images show African-American boys in fields and forests, docks and porches, in scenes that echo Wright’s musings. “As my delegate,/ My shadow imitates me/ This first day of spring,” he writes as a boy chases his shadow across snow-spattered grass. Elsewhere, a boy and an elderly man observe a patchwork freight train: “Empty railroad tracks:/ A train sounds in the spring hills/ And the rails leap with life.” The clustered, overlapping photographs scatter and dissipate at the edges of the spreads, subtly reflecting the evanescence of the moments Wright describes. Ages 5–10. (Feb.)