An easy 5 stars. This is a book I could carry around for a few months. It's certainly not going on my actual shelves any time soon. Two old poets hold forth in short spurts. If you like like haiku, or asian verse, and if you'd like to know how the American idiom can comfortably extend the forms this is the book for you. If you'd like a master class in writing but hate the how-to books, this is for you. 
 Here's what: this book can teach you how to see, and it can teach you how to think about what you've seen, and it can teach you how to write about both. That's big stuff, but not only that, there's at least one gem on every page. Here are a few, at random: 
 The old hen scratches 
 then looks, scratches then looks. 
 My life. 
 In my garden 
 the late sun glows 
 through a rabbit's ears. 
 How can it be 
 that everyone my age 
 is older than I? 
 A nephew rubs the sore feet 
 of his aunt, 
 and the rope that lifts us all toward grace 
 creaks in the pulley. 
 Like I said, big stuff.