A World of Imperfect Haikus

A World of Imperfect Haikus: Poems 2022 by Richard Milazzo is a book of poetry the author contends a "poetry lover (ugh!) will regret reading. And which I regret writing." He believes in "neither poetry nor in the excuses that led him to "compile these complaints and lamentations, these manifestations of self-pity; existential stories out of school; an ideological bag of tricks resulting in an orgy of dialectical irresolutions, but which did not prevent me from lauding, at some subliminal level, these louche and outré characteristics. In the end, this is all you will find here." We, the publishers, of course, beg to differ. But our opinions, evidently, mattered little to our author, unable, as we were, to dissuade him from this onslaught of self-deprecations, and ultimately from denouncing the book. A "poet with black wings," indeed. Such is the title of a painting which Alessandro Twombly destroyed, but which did not stop the author from gracing the front cover with it. "What attracted me was the way the word 'imperfect' pointed in the direction of the so-called 'flaw' in the image, the lacuna - the damaged part, the missing part of every history, every image, every perception." A poet with black wings, if ever there was one, "invested neither in the journey nor the destination."