David Elliott’s interest in haiku began in college when he came across the Peter Pauper Press haiku anthologies. But it was not until he got inspired by Gary Snyder’s poetry while doing graduate work in English at Syracuse that he began to take haiku more seriously. Aided by his future wife’s enthusiasm for Asian culture (“it was she who put R. H. Blyth’s anthologies into my hands in the late 1960s”) he began to be more critically aware of haiku’s importance and to make attempts at writing them. It was his discovery of the North American haiku community in the late ’70s, however, that turned him into a haiku poet. He teaches English at Keystone College in Pennsylvania, is an “avid jazz fan and a very amateur jazz saxophonist,” and likes to go mountain climbing in the Adirondacks.
Elliott was born in Minneapolis on December 26, 1944. He writes that “Baseball has always been my favorite sport and while growing up I was a fan of the Minneapolis Millers, a triple-A farm team for the New York Giants. Once a year the Giants came to town for an exhibition game, and one of the highlights of my childhood was watching Willie Mays hitting home runs. My favorite big league team, though, was the Dodgers. I was never on a school team but played a lot of neighborhood ball. My favorite position was first base. As a kid I loved my special first-baseman’s mitt (a “Big Klu,” endorsed by Ted Kluszewski) and lived for those one-handed catches stretched out with my foot on the base. My baseball haiku, however, come mostly from watching my sons play little league ball.”
Shielding his eyes
with his baseball glove…
first geese
Empty bleachers—
on the freshly raked baseline
pigeon tracks
Two herons
slowly fly over
the little league field
Flash of lightning—
all the little leaguers
look up
Night game
a softball soars
through swarms of gnats