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LYNX BOOK REVIEWS
Jane Reichhold
A Boy’s Seasons: Haibun Memoirs by Cor van den Heuvel. Single Island Press, 379 State Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801:2010. Paper perfect bound, 6.5 x 7.5 inches, 206 pages, Introduction by Carl Patrick. $24.95.
If you are a haiku writer, at any stage of newness to the form, you know who Cor van den Heuvel is due to the popularity of the several editions of his classic, The Haiku Anthology.
Beyond and above this worthy credential there are ten of his own books of haiku plus five more that he has edited or co-edited. It is all there on the very first page in this book. [Interesting, unusual – not your grandfather’s old Oldsmobile]
Also, if you write haiku you surely know what haibun is so we can skip the several explanations of the form. Carl Patrick’s page of preface has a title – The Kaleidoscopic Year: A Preface in the Form of a Letter to the Author – that has its first sentence:
“There is so much to admire in A Boy’s Seasons: the mysterious power of individual haiku; the way the haiku seem to condense out of their context and drop onto the page, giving new resilience to the haibun form; the pure American wine poured into old sake bottles; the humor; the intensity of a boy’s perceptions coupled with the double perspective of nostalgia that saturates our memory. . . .[sic] [Dear Mr. Patrick, Is this how you write a letter? Your warm sentiments overwhelm me.]
Do not let my feelings and comments keep you from reading the rest of Carl Patrick’s preface as he goes on to express some thoughts needful for your understanding of A Boy’s Seasons. I wish I could reprint all of it, but I cannot and should not which is why you should buy the book to read and ponder his words for yourself.
Obviously Mr. Patrick did not say the words of introduction that van den Heuvel wanted or needed for the book, so being a writer he wrote, “This book is about a boy growing up in mid-20th Century America. Like many other boys of his generation the seasons for him were defined by the sports he played and loved.”
There you have it. An ordinary, All-American growing boy who later comes under the influence of haiku, haibun and the importance of organizing a book by seasons. What is there not to like? I ask any testosterone-endowed male. Nothing the booming bass voice could reply.
Perhaps I am the wrong person to review this book. I abjure baseball; I find little boys dirty, smelly, and incomprehensible and all sports were ruined for me forever thanks to the horrors of high school phys.ed. I refuse to read any more books that are another rerun of the author’s peak of experience – a high school sport scene. [Pat Conroy, I love your poetic words beyond all others’ but I cannot take another of your sport stories.]
I do love and honor haiku but I am not a fan of Shiki’s shasei style – a just the facts ma’am school of haiku. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with Shiki’s well-known theory of how to write haiku. Many people are attracted to ease of it because the style avoids associations, contrasts, or comparisons or any of the other many techniques of haiku. Think of seeing a photograph in words instead of a poem. Remember later what has been said here. Perhaps van den Heuvel was drawn to Shiki’s style because Shiki too loved baseball so very much.
Now I come to the part I really can enjoy and find much delight in reading. Cor’s prose is excellent and flows around one like summer day under the sprinkler on grass needing to be mowed. For him, as a child, without the influence of Japanese literature, the year had two seasons – winter with its snow and summer with sunshine. The exact opposite of the Japanese ideal of the in-between seasons of spring and autumn. But Cor is being honest and bringing to us his world as a young boy and for that we must be thankful for his wonderful recall and excellent writing skills.
And then we find the first haiku:
first warm day
fitting my fingers into the mitt
pounding the pocket
If I were still in my teaching mode, writing lessons for the Bare Bones School of Haiku, I would ask, which basic guideline of haiku writing does this poem break? Maybe you are staring a this page with a wrinkled forehead? You wonder how I could question this hallow haiku moment of one of my revered elders? Maybe this haiku already has you back in baggy jeans with muddy cuffs so why should I harp on it like the teacher you thought you just escaped from in the classroom?
Cor van den Heuvel loves sports and he brings back the memories with all the love and enthusiasm of a young boy. He was evidently an observant child as he notices everything. Not only the clichéd signs of the seasons, but the way his muscles moved, how each ordinary childhood activity over-laid the seasons with a different orientation to nature. It is all there and it is such a comfort to have him dredge up and paint in such glowing colors scenes from the childhood I also had. Cor, I too loved the book Ferdinand and it affected me as deeply as it must have you. Perhaps that is why I am still a pacifist. Are you?
Like you, I fell from grace and had a fight in high school, and like your experience, the fight was about the opposite sex. Ah, you see how easy it is to fall into Cor’s book, to feel as reading it you are companions sitting over beers and remembering yesteryears.
I suppose I should say more about the haiku. Or the art of haibun. It is all so hard. Haiku I think I have figured out and feel I know a great one when I see it.
throw to first
the ball follows it shadow
into the sunlit mitt
I will gladly remember this one. But so many of the haiku continue the prose story or fill the gaps in the narrative. This is the hard thing about haibun. Has anyone truly established the relationship between the prose and the poetry? Some say the haiku should sum up or act as a torque point to pull together images or situations. Others say the haiku should act as a leap – a dive in a new, but always related! place, voice, or situation – the way one makes the twist in a tanka.
Should even the prose be treated as poetry? Should the prose be written in a style different from one’s normal prose style as if in a letter or a preface? In A Boy’s Seasons the answer is that the prose is written in the best style of memoirs and the haiku are randomly sprinkled through out – sometimes singly; sometimes in sequences, most of which are arranged chronologically. The haiku are mostly matter-of-fact realistic portrayal of fact.
shagging the fly ball
I step on an Easter egg
hidden in the grass
As you can see from the haiku examples, the old rule of 5,7,5 is closer to Cor’s heart than I would have thought.
Heart! That brings me to another thought I had about A Boy’s Seasons. How can a boy remember so much and yet have so few memories of parents or sibling? Aren’t most of our childhood memories glued to our brains with emotion? Our childhoods are forged and bent with our feelings toward parents or womb-mates. Here are none. Haiku are supposed to be objective, cool, without passion. Should haibun also be stripped of every whiff of feeling or better still, love?
There is still much for me to consider about when thinking of A Boy’s Seasons. The book has been lying in the to-be-reviewed file for too many months already. I am grateful to Cor for so much, he is a pleasure to work with, and I have great respect for him as one of the luminaries of the haiku scene in New York City. I loved the parts of the trip down memory that we could share and I thank him for the lovely haiku:
throw to first
the ball follows it shadow
into the sunlit mitt
Madeline Findlay at Single Island Press has made a beautiful book out of Cor’s memories.
In the Field: A Collection of Haiku by Neil Fleishmann. Natah Zev Press, New York City: 2011. Flat-spined, 4 x 7, 100 pages, one poem per page, full-color cover. No price stated.
In the Field also comes from a New Yorker, but there the comparison with Cor van den Heuvel’s book ends. In the Field’s cover is in full color and on the back is a photo of the author. Neil Fleishman is a stand-up comic and was the winner of the recent “Funniest Rabbi in New York” competition. He lectures on a wide array of topics, including the humor in Judaism and the power of poetry.
If you thought I was hard on Cor for his style of haiku do not read this review because the blood-spattering is going to be horrendous. An example of Neil Fleishman’s haiku:
Whisper me to sleep
my turbulent soul asks G-d
Heed my prayer filled yawn
Can you imagine what I would say if I released the brake on my jaw and let my fingers fly? Maybe in my garbled mumbling you detect me screaming, how can a person in 2011 be so unaware of what an English-language haiku has become? On which books of haiku is this man basing his work? Whom has he found who writes like this?
I must admit that I am touched that someone has so much confidence in himself to make a book of work without any research into what is being done in the field. It’s like writing a physics textbook without a knowledge of Newton. No one would do that, but when it comes to poetry everyone is a poet. I have said that because I believe it. And look where it has taken me! In the Field is an expression of a person’s most inner thoughts. For that I can be kind and gracious. I believe we all have a beauty within us that touches the best in every other person. And I think it is possible to share this over poetry. And I congratulate every person who takes the time, effort, and expense to write and publish a book. Truly. I know what you have gone through to get this book in my hands.
But, but, but. My head aches and the cramp in my shoulder is screaming.
Neil, you seem a kind and loving soul. May you find the haiku style that releases this glory unmarred for others. Someday you will see how funny In the Field is as a book of haiku. I wish you a long life and many letters and thanks for the interesting way to write G-d.
Tanka Moments: A Man’s Journey by David Lee Kirkland. High Hill Press, USA: 2010. Paper perfect bound, single-color cover, end papers [no one has those anymore!] 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 265 poems on unnumbered pages, $14.95.
It is May, the lovely month of May. The goldfinches are flinching strands of wool from the wads of fleece tied to trees, grasses nod with heads full of ripening seeds, a gentle breeze blows from the blue of sea, and I am reading a book with such tanka as this one from David Lee Kirkland:
Merely strolling
Not unaware but heedless
You awake desire
Trailing not perfume but fire
Baffling poor men like me
As Shirley MacLain says to Julia Stiles, “Carolina, why is life so hard for you?”
Mr. Kirkland answers:
Gentle waves
A beach umbrella
Lazy days
Too rarely prescribed
For our busy days
At first I was stopped by the caps and strange, to me, rhythms of these tanka, but the longer I let them simmer in me the more I see Kirkland has learned a lot about tanka from the translations of the Heian court ladies and is making an honest, valid attempt to bring the form to his thoughts and feelings. He seems to understand the pivot and the twist necessary for tanka and is able to use it smoothly. May his tribe increase.
Zugvoegel – Migratory Birds – Oiseaux migrateurs – Aves migratorias by Klaus-Deiter Wirth. Hamburger Haiku Verlag www.haiku.de Paper perfect bound, 8.5 x5.5 inches, 200 pages. Email for price and postage: infoAThaikuDOTde.
As you can see from the complete title of Zugvoegel this book of 150 haiku comes with each poem translated into these four languages and sometimes there is even a Dutch version added as bonus. The amazing thing is that Klaus-Deiter Wirth has made all these translations. What a bridge he is for the exchange of haiku.
The book is very interesting when one follows the journey of one haiku through the parade of tongues. Sometimes new insights or even a good ‘Aha!,’ would result after reading the same idea filtered through the roadmap of Europe. Even the typesetting (use of caps and periods) seemed to be influenced by the language or perhaps it was the time. Many of the French and Spanish versions seem to have been made more recently. I did find it a big help that since Mr. Wirth writes in both German and English, that the original version was set in italics.
I wondered if the author understood what made his haiku work in German but then was less successful in the three other languages.
Von Licht getroffen,
unversehrt die Karaffe,
gebrochen der Strahl.
Hit by a sunbeam
the carafe remains intact,
the ray refracts.
frappe par la lumiere
intacte la carafe
refracte le rayon
golpeado por la luz
intacta la garrafa
refracctado el rayo
For me, the haiku aspect of the original is the idea that the glass carafe, though hit by a sunbeam, is not damaged, but it breaks the beam. I guess I would argue to have ‘breaks’ the ray instead of refracts which is more ‘bend.’ But this is what happens to a good haiku when multi-language readers put their heads together.
Klaus-Dieter Wirth has done his homework. Every poem in the book has been published somewhere in the world with all the credits and footnotes faithfully given in the back of the book.
Even the Foreword is in all four languages. There is an amazing amount of work surrounding each of these haiku. I hope that in his next book Wirth can let go of the introductory caps and punctuation on the German and the English.
This is a solid book, beautifully made with many well-crafted haiku. May it land in many hands.
Ahaiga! by Emily Romano. Shadows Ink Publications, 1209 Milwaukee Street, Excelsior Springs, MO 64024: 2011. Paper, stapled spin, full color pages, 8.5 x 5.5, 40 pages. $15.
Emily Romano’s name was in the first American haiku magazines I ever saw (in 1980) and I know because I was impressed enough by her work to remember the name and to write her haiku in my notebooks and finally in my book of favorite haiku. The lady has been writing and publishing for even longer than that. Over the years that I have followed her work I was constantly surprised at how inventive she was and how innovative – trying every new haiku writing experiment. And now in her riper years she has turned to haiga.
While others, lacking skills with brush and ink, turn to photographs for the graphic portion of their haiga Romano has turned to the computer. With its ability to share shapes, and to fling color across the page, through the use of fractals, Romano is able to create impressions, feelings, hints in her graphics that really do compliment her haiku.
It is often difficult for artists to leap-link their haiku to their photo. It is too easy for the haiku to become an elongated title or description of what one can plainly see in the picture.
The abstract nature of Emily Romano’s graphics allows her more freedom in choosing a haiku to accompany it. The lady has a delightful sense of humor; you can see that in her book title. I know of no one who works harder on haiga. She is always in my mailbox! You can see her work in the solo poetry section of this issue of Lynx. Here is one of my favorites from Lynx XXIV:3
BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS
(as received)
bottle rockets press is happy to
announce a new anthology series called " 3-n-1"
The first book in the series is called my favorite thing with the poets;
Michael Ketchek, Bob Lucky, and Lucas Stensland. Edited by Stanford M. Forrester/Glossy, color paperback/5"x6.5"/
45 pages/ April 2011/ISBN 978-0-9792257-6-5.
These are mostly haiku, senryu, and short poems that are without pretension.
Although these three poets are at different places in their poetic journey, they
all fit like a puzzle piece while navigating through the human condition. Honest,
sincere, entertaining, yet provocative would describe best these poets' craft.
-$7.50 copy plus $2.50 (media mail) US and Canada.
-$7.50 copy plus $3.50 (media mail) Japan, Europe and elsewhere
Payment options:
-Check made out to "Stanford M. Forrester"
-pay-pal invoice sent by request
-order on-line at the website with a pay-pal option
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Stanford M. Forrester: bottlerockets_99ATyahooDOTcom
Stanford M. Forrester
bottle rockets press
P.O. box 189
Windsor, CT 06095
USA
www.bottlerocketspress.com
TANKA FIELDS by Robert D. Wilson, with a foreword by
Michael McClintock.
White Egret Press,
For a free pdf of the whole book just send a request to:
robert d. wilson [foamfishATgmailDOTcom]
dining with you
on a plate of stars . . .
each one a memory
painted with what
could have been
she shivers
momentarily,
as if to tell me
it’ll be okay
. . . a full moon!
“These are poems of long nights, intuitive dreams and a deep yearning to find,
in nature, equanimity and a path to happiness. Wilson treats his readers to poems
filled with mystery. His original images of the world and its inhabitants will not fail
to stir deep-seated emotions and leave the reader breathless.”
Kirsty Karkow, Maine
Snapshot Press:
Roberta Beary’s debut collection, The Unworn Necklace, drew universal praise from leading figures in the worldwide haiku community when it was published in 2007. The following year it received a Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America and was a finalist in the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award – the first book of haiku to receive such recognition.
The collection quickly sold out of its print runs in paperback and is now available in a special hardback edition.
‘A 70-poem not-quite-narrative cycle that has the weight and emotional force of a novel. A sprawling & powerful novel. . . . The aesthetic here of absolutely minimal strokes accumulating to create a far more powerful picture is really overwhelming.’
Ron Silliman
‘If all haiku books were so carefully crafted, we’d not have to ever make any apologies for our devotion to the genre.’
William J. Higginson
‘Masterful haiku.’
George Swede in Frogpond
Full details are available on the website www.snapshotpress.co.uk
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