Chotto: Poems by David Farrah
David Farrah opens his collection, “Chotto,” with a paragraph discussing the flexibility of that Japanese word: “It means a little of something,” but it has, in addition, “chameleon-like qualities” that allow it to “tactfully hedge or suggest or politely request.” It can also “color itself passive aggressive and deferentially resist.” This small word is brimming with meaning, and thus can be seen as emblematic of the poems in this book. They too are little things: the longest is twenty-one lines, and many are much shorter. The few lines that make up the poems are short, too: There are a couple of seven-syllable lines because the form of those poems, haiku, demands them, and the odd six-syllable line, but the poems are mostly composed of lines of five syllables or fewer. Like chotto , though, these little poems do a lot. See, for example, how in “Event Horizon,” th...