Our Debut debuts!

Madeleine Findlay. Shaped Water: A Haiku Year (first edition)

a review by William J. Higginson at haikaipub.wordpress.com


Portsmouth, NH: Single Island Press, 2007. 4.25×5.5″ (11×14 cm), approx 64 unnumbered pages, $14.95 from the publisher, 379 State St., 03801.
With thanks to Tom D’Evelyn.

With Shaped Water, editor, publisher and author Madeleine Findlay inaugurates her and Tom D’Evelyn’s “small press” in fine style.

From a four-color wrapper to the letterpress-printed interior in sewn signatures of deep cream Ingres paper bound in “Turner Blue” boards embossed with the book’s title, this book is a class act. Its one-to-a-page haiku, elegantly set in Pastonchi monotype by Ed Rayher at Swamp Press, speak quietly to inner places engaged with the outer world.

Some of Findlay’s haiku seem simple in the extreme, as in this almost uncommentable occurrence:

blown
across the kitchen floor
dead leaves

. . . but, on the facing page, we see that more is at stake in these poems, where each word approaches silent, subtle gesture:

out in the cold wind
I walk into my shadow
my back warm

But I have jumped ahead into winter, so let’s back up to see what we might discover in spring, toward the front of the book:

across the counter

and through a crack in the wall

snakeskin

Sounds like my grandfather’s old shed out back, where I found such things after a snowbound winter finally melted away and his worn hands sought tools for work in the soil.

This is a carefully crafted book in every dimension, a “year” to set above any other I know in haiku lately. A wonderful debut book for both press and poet. I’ll not give away any more of these poems here, but recommend that you check them out yourself. The price is low for a book of such quality, and there are only 200 to be had in this limited edition. Check it out further on the publisher’s web site: http://www.haikumuse.com/.

Copyright © 2008 William J. Higginson. Reprinted by permission.

A Commentary

the bridge’s shadow
motionless on the river
bright January

-- Tom D'Evelyn



Connections are in disconnect, removed, abstracted and yet nourished by the shadow. The bridge as a symbol is cultivated on the water. This internalizes the message and makes one think of this distillation -- crossing, intentions and directions. "Motionless" is the way we feel this time of year as we wait insouciantly for spring. We are in suspended animation, putting things off and rationalizing -- buried in unfurnished hope. In contrast January is "bright" -- metallic -- often foiling the self-image of being curled in a cave. You have everything going here -- the river bringing change is flat -- supplicant to the structure crossing above it. The tension is in perfect suspension and the bridge -- the main character, the hero, the knight, keeps re-emerging. -- Madeleine Findlay