If we as haiku poets believe anything at all it is that our small packages are indeed big things. We mouth truisms about giving a poem sufficient space to breath (as though the “breathing” wasn’t taking place in that oxygen-free zone we call mind) so the full drawn-out resonance of each poem will not bump up against the competing resonances in previous or subsequent poems. We know better, and we can be mildly ironic about our particular fetishism. All that being said, we still like it when our work is treated well, couched attractively, respected. Haiku may, as Blyth suggests, aim at significance, but given a chance to commingle with beauty, we’ll take some of that as well. Which brings us to this handsome little book: this is what we’d like for our next volume. Easy to hand, tactile, well-considered and -judged, this is a beautiful production in every regard. Haiku will live and die with its poetic products, but such a volume suggests that good companionship with the book arts certainly heightens the experience. As to the poems: the author is primarily of the “nature observer” school, with a slight tendency at times to draw conclusions or hypothesize. Overall, however, the poems are consonant with the book, beautiful, easy to hand, and attractive. We look forward to more such volumes from this press.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Jim Kacian's review of Shaped Water (first edition) in Frogpond Winter 2008
Findlay, Madeleine Shaped Water: A Haiku Year (Single Island Press, 379 State Street, Portsmouth NH 03801, 2007). ISBN 978-1-4243-3366-0. 60 pp., 4.25” x 5.5” perfect softbound, letterpress, stitched in signatures with gloss dustjacket, $14.95 from the publisher, also at >.
If we as haiku poets believe anything at all it is that our small packages are indeed big things. We mouth truisms about giving a poem sufficient space to breath (as though the “breathing” wasn’t taking place in that oxygen-free zone we call mind) so the full drawn-out resonance of each poem will not bump up against the competing resonances in previous or subsequent poems. We know better, and we can be mildly ironic about our particular fetishism. All that being said, we still like it when our work is treated well, couched attractively, respected. Haiku may, as Blyth suggests, aim at significance, but given a chance to commingle with beauty, we’ll take some of that as well. Which brings us to this handsome little book: this is what we’d like for our next volume. Easy to hand, tactile, well-considered and -judged, this is a beautiful production in every regard. Haiku will live and die with its poetic products, but such a volume suggests that good companionship with the book arts certainly heightens the experience. As to the poems: the author is primarily of the “nature observer” school, with a slight tendency at times to draw conclusions or hypothesize. Overall, however, the poems are consonant with the book, beautiful, easy to hand, and attractive. We look forward to more such volumes from this press.
If we as haiku poets believe anything at all it is that our small packages are indeed big things. We mouth truisms about giving a poem sufficient space to breath (as though the “breathing” wasn’t taking place in that oxygen-free zone we call mind) so the full drawn-out resonance of each poem will not bump up against the competing resonances in previous or subsequent poems. We know better, and we can be mildly ironic about our particular fetishism. All that being said, we still like it when our work is treated well, couched attractively, respected. Haiku may, as Blyth suggests, aim at significance, but given a chance to commingle with beauty, we’ll take some of that as well. Which brings us to this handsome little book: this is what we’d like for our next volume. Easy to hand, tactile, well-considered and -judged, this is a beautiful production in every regard. Haiku will live and die with its poetic products, but such a volume suggests that good companionship with the book arts certainly heightens the experience. As to the poems: the author is primarily of the “nature observer” school, with a slight tendency at times to draw conclusions or hypothesize. Overall, however, the poems are consonant with the book, beautiful, easy to hand, and attractive. We look forward to more such volumes from this press.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Hem of Your Kimono
If only I could tie
The string of my kite
To the hem of your kimono
Chiyo-ni, trans Patricia Donegan
In one of Chiyo’s fluid (and erotic!) haiku, we can follow the syntax to locate the sections in this translation: lines 1 and 2 make a unit, then there's the prepositional phrase that completes the sentence.
Reading this haiku is like watching a figure emerge from the brush of a painter! Except that it’s a rare painting that becomes so upclose and personal—or is it?
As for the analogies informing the poem: The "hem" is to Zoka as the kite is to the poet: zoka consciousness "takes in" the hem the way a person "takes in" a kite -- with a "tie"; otherwise it will fly away in the (Spring) breeze.
Zoka sees the hem of the kimono as full of energy and independence, perhaps as an emodiment of the spirit of the lovely “you” addressed by Chiyo.
Seeing the hem in light of zoka saves the poem from being merely sexy, though it is delightfully that: zoka as The Creative loves to see "things" in their act of being, and this hem must fly!
>
The string of my kite
To the hem of your kimono
Chiyo-ni, trans Patricia Donegan
In one of Chiyo’s fluid (and erotic!) haiku, we can follow the syntax to locate the sections in this translation: lines 1 and 2 make a unit, then there's the prepositional phrase that completes the sentence.
Reading this haiku is like watching a figure emerge from the brush of a painter! Except that it’s a rare painting that becomes so upclose and personal—or is it?
As for the analogies informing the poem: The "hem" is to Zoka as the kite is to the poet: zoka consciousness "takes in" the hem the way a person "takes in" a kite -- with a "tie"; otherwise it will fly away in the (Spring) breeze.
Zoka sees the hem of the kimono as full of energy and independence, perhaps as an emodiment of the spirit of the lovely “you” addressed by Chiyo.
Seeing the hem in light of zoka saves the poem from being merely sexy, though it is delightfully that: zoka as The Creative loves to see "things" in their act of being, and this hem must fly!
>
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Commentary on a haiku by Jamie Edgecombe
remembering Basho
a scarecrow emerges
from my brush
-- Jamie Edgecombe
In this haiku, “Basho” is a symbol, a reference to a man, yes, but also a reference to what he means to the poet and, potentially, the reader of the poem. Edgecombe’s haiku – Edgecombe is a painter as well as a poet – reveals Basho as the name of a substance carried through meditation into a work of art.
The poem is grounded in actuality. “Scarecrow” is one of the historical Basho’s favorite images, so there’s an allusion and an homage to the poet in the image. But it’s also a specific image that carries with it narratives of boundaries – seasonal, organic, cultural. The haiku shows a modern poet participating in the symbolic world of his master poet through an image.
Of course none of this would matter were the haiku not well written, if the gap between the superposed line – remembering Basho – and the base where not a formal and persuasive acknowledgement of the master distinction between time and eternity, between particulars and Being as One. The sense of immediacy one gets from a good haiku is achieved here not by sentimental feeling but by juxtapositions of present/past, thing/art – several paradoxes – which, taken in by the reader, produce an experience of “flow” of consciousness which is parallel to the one mentioned in the poem. That is, the poem reveals through juxtaposition and paradox the “simplicity” of Way over against the complexity of the life of composition.
This distinction between complex, plural composition and the simple oneness of “nonbeing” (in one tradition) or Being (in another) is the “unwobbling pivot” of haiku and finds its equivalences in world cultures including Chinese, Japanese, Medieval Christian, and contemporary theology.
In the tension of its two-part form, the ideal haiku acknowledges the invisible behind the visible world of images, the unimaginable behind the floating world of existence. This secret architecture is the basis on which to evaluate haiku as a poetic form “equal” (sub specie aeternatis) to all comers — for example, Dante’s “comedy.”
Theory of course only prepares us to enjoy the gift of this contemporary haiku, which is quite expressive, lively, ardent -- human. The flow of the brush becomes not only an act of tradition but an act of eros: the poet participates through love in the life of the master. Reading the haiku is a pleasure because of the meditative integrity of the composition. A “moment” yes but also a process, a flow toward a transcendent horizon.
Finally, to return to the opening line (which we can now understand in terms of the whole), the act of “remembering” brings into being “consciousness” by which the ego transcends itself in the name of Basho. Indeed, the act of anamnesis (as Plato called it) is profoundly erotic and the essence of humanity.
a scarecrow emerges
from my brush
-- Jamie Edgecombe
In this haiku, “Basho” is a symbol, a reference to a man, yes, but also a reference to what he means to the poet and, potentially, the reader of the poem. Edgecombe’s haiku – Edgecombe is a painter as well as a poet – reveals Basho as the name of a substance carried through meditation into a work of art.
The poem is grounded in actuality. “Scarecrow” is one of the historical Basho’s favorite images, so there’s an allusion and an homage to the poet in the image. But it’s also a specific image that carries with it narratives of boundaries – seasonal, organic, cultural. The haiku shows a modern poet participating in the symbolic world of his master poet through an image.
Of course none of this would matter were the haiku not well written, if the gap between the superposed line – remembering Basho – and the base where not a formal and persuasive acknowledgement of the master distinction between time and eternity, between particulars and Being as One. The sense of immediacy one gets from a good haiku is achieved here not by sentimental feeling but by juxtapositions of present/past, thing/art – several paradoxes – which, taken in by the reader, produce an experience of “flow” of consciousness which is parallel to the one mentioned in the poem. That is, the poem reveals through juxtaposition and paradox the “simplicity” of Way over against the complexity of the life of composition.
This distinction between complex, plural composition and the simple oneness of “nonbeing” (in one tradition) or Being (in another) is the “unwobbling pivot” of haiku and finds its equivalences in world cultures including Chinese, Japanese, Medieval Christian, and contemporary theology.
In the tension of its two-part form, the ideal haiku acknowledges the invisible behind the visible world of images, the unimaginable behind the floating world of existence. This secret architecture is the basis on which to evaluate haiku as a poetic form “equal” (sub specie aeternatis) to all comers — for example, Dante’s “comedy.”
Theory of course only prepares us to enjoy the gift of this contemporary haiku, which is quite expressive, lively, ardent -- human. The flow of the brush becomes not only an act of tradition but an act of eros: the poet participates through love in the life of the master. Reading the haiku is a pleasure because of the meditative integrity of the composition. A “moment” yes but also a process, a flow toward a transcendent horizon.
Finally, to return to the opening line (which we can now understand in terms of the whole), the act of “remembering” brings into being “consciousness” by which the ego transcends itself in the name of Basho. Indeed, the act of anamnesis (as Plato called it) is profoundly erotic and the essence of humanity.
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