Born on May 15, 1935, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Raffael de Gruttola grew up in Somerville, where he lived next to a baseball park. He played a lot of baseball as a boy, becoming the starting shortstop for an outstanding Somerville High School team that lost the State Championship Game to Springfield in Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. He throws and bats right-handed. A Red Sox fan, he saw many Sox games when young by knowing how to sneak into Fenway. He remembers getting autographs from Ted Williams and other Boston greats. He went to Boston and Northeastern Universities after serving in the U.S. Army.
His first interest in poetry was free verse, but he started writing haiku in the sixties after reading Kenneth Yasuda and R. H. Blyth. In 1984 he self-published Where ashes float, a collection of free-verse poems with a selection of haiku at the end. His first haiku in a magazine was in Hal Roth’s Wind Chimes. In 1987 he helped start the Boston Haiku Society and has served as its president. He has also been president of the Haiku Society of America. In recent years his work in haiga has received particular notice. Collaborating with several artists, he writes haiku as integral parts of their limited-edition prints.
the umpire signals
time-out
a beach ball in the outfield
lost in the lights
the high fly ball that
never comes down
the umpire with raised arms!
a trail of dust still circling
the infield
puddles
in the batter’s box
abandoned sandlot