Heron Sea Available as Free E-Book Under a Creative Commons License

[Fire Pearls]

Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay, the first collection by well-known tanka poet and editor, M. Kei, is now available as a free e-book. Published in electronic form through Scribd.com, it is made available under the Creative Common Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Well-received when first published as a trade paperback in 2007, it contains a number of his well-known tanka, including:

the dawn puddles 

around my house;

I rise 

to sail the moon

in a paper boat

shaking the bats

out of the mainsail

a cloud of night

made homeless 

by my hands

if only the leaves

were not so green,

this lover’s heart

might enjoy

a little emptiness

It also published a number of other short forms, including tercets and haiku. All the poems and notes are included here; the contents are the same, although reformatted for the electronic edition. Kei said, "Although there are those who are afraid giving a book away online will decrease its commercial potential, the sad truth is that poetry books have very little commercial value. The goal of a poet is to be read, and there is no easier way to be read than to publish for free on the Internet. Within minutes of first posting the book, it had garnered over a hundred readers, several of whom downloaded or purchased the book." Kei plans to release more works through the same method.

“M. Kei’s collection, Heron Sea, is a wonderful read  on several counts. The poems, primarily tanka and haiku, add up to more than their sum; each is a pleasure to read but all together they comprise a startlingly moving look into the heart of the poet and at the incomparable beauty of the Chesapeake Bay. A Bay dweller, myself, I can attest to the accuracy of M. Kei’s eye and pen. Kei has tapped into the magic of short verse and presented the reader with a collage of amazing depth and insight. Poetry lovers, sailors, everyone in Bay country, and anyone who wants a powerful and beautiful read, should buy this book!”—Denis M. Garrison, Editor, Modern English Tanka 

To view the work online, visit <http://www.scribd.com/doc/19436004/Heron-Sea-Short-Poems-of-the-Chesapeake-Bay>

To purchase the book online, visit <http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/heron-sea/736216>

To interview the author, contact kujaku (at) verizon (dot) net.

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