Hockey Haiku: The Essential Collection by John Poch and Chad Davidson is an amazingly brilliant collection of hockey-related haiku. For someone like me, who is a huge fan of both haiku and hockey, this collection sounded like a dream come true. Reading through the collection, the dream was realized. It's high-quality, funny haiku.
Interestingly, these guys are academics. Poch teaches at Texas Tech and edits the journal 32 Poems Magazine and Davidson is an assistant English professor at the University of West Georgia.
I caught up with Poch via email for this PuckUpdate exclusive:

Steve Ovadia: There's a very modern bent to the poems. Did you just start crafting hockey haiku within the past few years? How did those start?

John Poch: Chad Davidson and some of his posse used to work on hockey haiku together in their spare time. We met in Texas in the late '90's and began to take HH to the next level. Literature, I mean.

SO:How did this collection come together? When did you realize it was publishable?

JP:We used to get really bored at writer's conferences listening to famous writers wax philosophical about how to write a good historical novel or how to do research for poems blah blah blah...we started passing hockey haiku back and forth instead of listening to this nonsense. He'd write a line or two and I'd finish the poem, or vice versa. Before long we had a couple hundred. We cut them down to the "essential" ones. We knew a few small presses that were interested, but then I thought we should at least try the big presses. Sean Desmond, an editor with St. Martins called right away and made us an offer. We're poets. We had to ask some fiction writers, "What's an offer?"

SO: What do you think of the post-lockout NHL? Is too much made of the rule changes?

JP: Well, these guys have a ways to go to win back the hearts of Americans. The Canadians, they've moved on, because, well, they need hockey like you or I need an opposable thumb: life's too hard without it.

SO: You have some lockout haiku. Do the new NHL rules impact your new haiku?

JP: The rules have affected the haiku drastically. A bigger net means we need to cram even more natural imagery into each line. We are against bigger goals. We are for smaller goalies.

SO: You also seem vaguely intrigued by the absurdity of expansion teams. Is this the case? What is it about them that captures your fancy?

JP: It's a little nutty, these expansion teams coming out of such weird places, especially the south where ice is not such a natural thing. But, you need these young kids to keep the older establishments on their toes, what with their new ideas, their tube socks, and their hamburger sandwiches. Nevertheless, as they say in HIGHLANDER: At the end, "there can be only one."

SO: Back in Feb., Keith Gessen lamented that there's no great American hockey novel. Is this book at attempt to raise the literary status of hockey?

JP: In a word, yes. We saw that article in the New York Times, and we raised our eyebrows at each other, and then we lowered them.

SO: This book is a sendup of academic literary collections as much as it is a tribute to hockey. What has been the response of your colleagues in the academy and your colleagues in the stands?

JP: They're jealous, basically.

SO: Is there one favorite haiku in the collection?

JP: My favorites keep shifting. Here's today's favorite:

I cut my teeth on
roller hockey, but I broke
my teeth on the ice.

SO: There's a fair amount of Dallas Stars-themed haiku. Are those yours? What teams do you guys root for?

JP: We both lived in Texas during grad school, and we've watched Dallas more than any other team, I suppose. Chad knows much more about hockey than I do. I tend to get distracted by the colorful goalie helmets.

SO: Writer's Workshop: Is this haiku good enough for a future collection:

Bye John Davidson.
You left the booth for the Blues.
We muted our sets.

JP: You see, I like the way you're approaching this with flattery. You include both my first name, and Chad Davidson's last name in the first line of this generous haiku. You clearly understand the postmodern/classical notion of gift exchange embedded in the heartiest of hockey haiku.

The Dallas Morning News has an interesting item on how the club is trying to socially engineer the locker room (login info.):

Team-building is a key phrase for the Stars this season. In fact, the organization has gone so far as to rearrange the player seating in the locker room.

Defensemen were previously grouped together in one corner. They now are interspersed throughout the room. And there has been thought to who sits by whom, with good friends Mike Modano and Darryl Sydor neighbors and recently acquired center Ribeiro getting a spot next to former Montreal Canadiens teammate Stephane Robidas.

I think there's a lot of money to be made doing this kind of human feng shui. A few weeks ago the Times had a great article on how NFL coaches are changing the physical elements of team spaces in an effort to change the culture of the team. Sadly, the article is now behind the dreaded pay wall. Which is a shame because it was really interesting. You're going to have to trust me on that. Unless you have TimesSelect.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have TimesSelect. I've now read this article twice.
You know who's not behind a pay wall? PJ. He's got a great post featuring an email from former San Jose State captain Ray Kellam, now playing in the Spanish Hockey League. It's a great insight into playing hockey in a non-hockey culture and the kind of great stuff you really won't see anywhere else. Sharkspage is a great blog. I'm not sure we say that enough.

OK. First things first.
Thanks to Murph at Islanders Army for taking yesterday's "Who's the Bossy" post and bringing it to life.
Obviously, Murph is a genius.
In other news, the Miami Herald reports Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts have been playing together for the past 75 years (login info.).
But for me, the really interesting part is not Roberts and Nieuwendyk's HIGHLANDEResque relationship, but what Nieuwendyk did with the Dallas Stanley Cup:

When Nieuwendyk won his second Stanley Cup with Dallas in 1999, he took the trophy to the burger joint and filled it with gravy so that patrons could dip fries and eat from it.

As someone who loves gravy, I have to say that Nieuwendyk is just about as genius as Murph.

What a weekend!
In one night, I saw the Rangers win, the Gamecocks win, the Yankees lose, and the Mets clinch.
Good thing today is Columbus Day. I'm still pretty tired.
This is pretty scary: Islanders TV. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it seems to be a web-based TV station that's all Isles, all the time. Great content like video of ice girl tryouts and players watching movies at home. Right now, this is free for season ticket subscribers, but the plan is to roll it out as a fee-based service.
Obviously, it's tempting to say it's the craziest thing you've ever heard, but then you remember the 15-year contract to goalie Rick DiPietro and the idea of Islanders TV seems downright solid and sane.
And I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm not pitching I-TV a semi-reality show featuring me and GM/backup goalie Garth Snow in a bowling league with Islanders great Mike Bossy, where we constantly give Snow advice on doing his job. Of course, it'll be called "Who's the Bossy?"
My time is up. You've been great.