Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists

Kevin Kelly

Bicycle Haiku

$2.99
2011, Digital, 156 pages

$9.50
2001, Paperback, 156 pages
6 x 9 inches
ISBN-10: 0972392505
ISBN-13: 978-0972392501

Bicycle Haiku is a reproduction of a sketchbook I kept while I rode my bicycle across the US in 1979. It contains an ink sketch and a haiku for each day of the three month 5,000 mile trip. A typical scene would be like the day I passed through Francisco, Indiana. On a page full of cow faces staring up at me, the haiku goes: “Collective silence/Like I walked into the wrong room/Every horned head turned.” (This was Annie Dillard’s favorite.) I scanned the 151 images in the original book (which is the same size as this one) and printed this at a books-on-demand printer in 2001. This book will not be a best-seller. It’s a book of poetry, and you know what that means. It might appeal to anyone intrigued by pedaling across a continent, or loners fascinated by blue highways and other little-traveled roads, or sensitive souls really into haikus, or sketches. I can imagine a few odd ducks who collect self-published books that will be thrilled by this book. Personal friends of mine may be interested in this vanity publishing. For the rest — that is for most normal people — there is nothing of fashionable interest here.

Sample pages