The Road To Ocosingo

Written during travels in Mexico, from the immense capital city to the southern peasant villages of Chiapas, in the author's words "This is a journal of the trip, in mongrel mix of prose and verse. Its sense of form is much indebted to Japanese haibun, good style for jotting notes in a rucksack. I kept the writing deliberately loose. Haibun is always stricter, more keenly regimented in how it balances prose and terse lyric. Matsuo Basho is the poet who brought the haibun to it keenest development. . . . In English Basho's title is 'The Back Road to Oku.' On the back road to Ocosingo I heard the place names echo".