This project was never intended to be a book. It started amidst an REM/Grant Lee Buffalo tour as a year-long creative practice between a group of friends. We all committed to snail-mailing each other one haiku a week for a year, no matter where we were. I took the poems and some of the mail to Soft Skull on a whim, and we made it into a book. It spawned dozens of similar projects around the world, won an American Library Association award, and went into a second printing with additional pages and a new introduction by Steve Earle. We even got fan mail!
This is the cover of the original softcover edition. The seed packet was a prized graphic from Jim McKay’s time living in Athens, Georgia. My conception for the book was that it should be able to fit in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. 
This design was by Soft Skull’s Sander Hicks for a limited edition hardcover version of 200, each signed by all of the writers. It was to raise money for the press. 
The cover of the second edition, designed by me. It features a new section of connected haiku by the original authors as well as a new intro by Steve Earle.
Some 25 years later, it even spawned a mystery of sorts;
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/poetry-haiku-stipe-drawer