Haiku-Herman conquers Europe

EU President Herman Van Rompuy made a big media splash on Thursday when he published his first volume of poetry in traditional Japanese Haiku verse. But people are more interested in the man than in his poetry, writes the daily De Morgen: "The President of the EU, the man who has done little to solve the Greek crisis, the fellow President Obama accorded a handshake but no meeting. Now he's the talk of the entire European press. ... It's a bitter fact that Europe's papers are so excited about this book ... while another former Belgian prime minister [Guy Verhofstadt] who also hoped for a key job in Europe had no such luck although he wrote a real book with real ideas about Europe. ... Haiku Herman, by contrast, is a reflective, likeable gentleman, and a poet to boot. The Anglo-Saxon press can't get enough of such things. That's how people in Europe like to see the Belgians: innocuous and ingenuous."

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