Gerald Vizenor: favor of crows: New and Collected Haiku

favor of crows by Gerald Vizenor has plenty to celebrate and plenty to ponder. The poems here are largely quiet, occasionally listless, many are image-based and some are simply revelatory, in the sense that anything revelatory can be simple.

But wait: perhaps that listlessness is something else. 


       bright hollyhocks
teeter in the rush of trains
        flurry of faces


Like many fine haiku, these poems on the surface do not give up their essence easily. So, we see that if it is mind that struggles, lay aside mind and, as again with many fine haiku, something else appears: meaning opening up with the first rays of the sun.


            gusts of rain
trees turn away from the sea
            beach stories


Gerald Vizenor is a poet, critic, cultural theorist and academician, a leading Native American writer of the last half century and a member of the Chippewa Nation. He is a haiku scholar as well as haiku poet - his introduction, entitled "Haiku Scenes," displays his command of haiku history and haiku essence, and situates him in the Zen Buddhist / R. H. Blyth school of haiku theory and practice.


            red poppies 
trace the motion of the sun
        elders in the park


His linking of Native American culture and concepts to Japanese culture is at once informative and historical (Vizenor, as was true with many Americans, encountered the culture first hand during a tour of duty in WW II), and the relationship to nature and animism in both cultures makes for interesting, thought-provoking theory.


        china sunrise
tourists circle the statues
        cicada fugues


Ultimately, there is a balance of theory and feeling, the academic and the lyrical, and the truth is revealed in the poems themselves. His haiku are firmly nature based and season themed, with two contrasting elements stylistically prompting revelations both large and small, succinct and resonant, as in this poem.


    marsh marigolds
trembling in the rain
     faces on a bus


This haiku reminded me simultaneously of the classic haiku of the horse and the trembling flowers (a little help, anyone; I can't quite recall the poet or the poem exactly) and Pound's petals/faces/Metro poem.

The book is arranged seasonally, as are many traditional haiku collections. The autumn section is particularly strong, with the following poem recalling Bashō's famous autumn crow haiku (scroll down for multiple translations via this link):


          spider web
billows on a bare branch
            empty


Vizenor is at once subtle and almost understated, presenting us with images and contrast, and letting the reader take it from there. Like the finest haiku throughout time and across cultures.


         mountain snow
warblers search for apricots
           no regrets


We know the warblers have no regrets; how about you? 

Or perhaps the warblers do. What to make of these clever little sparrows?


       noisy sparrows
flutter over the birdbath
     clearing the snow


Sentience, learned behavior, coincidence?  Some things to ask ourselves as well as the sparrows.

Gerald Vizenor asks, and his answers are of the very best type; they are suggestive, they are lyrical, they are alive.

This is a book I anticipate revisiting again and again, as the seasons return again and again.  And, as with the seasons, one can anticipate a return of joy, each time different, each time the very same. Give it a try, from the library or the nearest bookstore, electronic or otherwise. 

It will reward you deeply. 


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Eigenfaces by Ylebru

the first cherry blossoms
soon scatter and stick...
people's faces

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku  

Haiku Canada Review - February 2010

One of my favorite magazines is the Haiku Canada Review, published by Haiku Canada.  It's been awhile since I've mentioned it, so I thought I'd take a look at the latest issue that's graced my mailbox.

One of my favorite things about HCR is that it is jam packed with poems. Besides regular haiku sections, there are sections on haiku in French, haibun, essays, linked verse, reviews, and letters.  Edited by LeRoy Gorman, the work is consistently fine, running the gamut from fairly traditional to experimental.  H. F. Noyes's regular column entitled simply "Favorite Haiku" is not to be missed; he has an unfailing sense for superior work and his commentary is both insightful and spot-on.

Here are some favs from this particular issue:

His castle gone
a young boy brings
the ocean home

Barry Goodman

This poem, though seemingly sentimental on the surface (and it is), touches on the use of scale in haiku.  The castle, a miniature version of the "real life" thing, and the idea of a small boy bringing the entire ocean home, force the reader not only to deal with concepts versus reality, making us see that an idea can be as important as the thing itself.  Plus, I just kept thinking about this E. E. Cumming's poem.

in-laws
we sit in silence
as my wife pees

Don Korobkin

It's so quiet I think I can almost hear ... an uncomfortable silence.

Old carthorse
long time emerging
from the covered bridge

H. F. Noyes

I'm not really sure exactly why but the rhythm of this haiku made me slow down as I read and re-read and re-read it again. It has a long measured cadence - who thought anyone might ever say that about any haiku at any time!

autumn garden
a couple turns
to face the sun

                                                    Michele Root-Bernstein


I've been reading so much classical haiku poetry this summer that I immediately thought about Bashō's poem about the hollyhocks turned toward the sun even while it's rain. It is nice to see a poem where this instinct is shared amongst other living things.

his wings
hold her light
egrets

Grant D. Savage

I'm not at all sure about anything about this poem except I like it. I suppose it all turns on the word "light," what it means in this context and the idea that one egret's wings might hold the light of another, so closely are they mingled.

Or maybe not.

From a review of Masajo Suzuki's Love Haiku comes these 4 fine poems:

spring sorrow-
I buy enough flowers
to embrace it

How much beauty does it take to convince a poet of life's ultimate sadness?

heartsick day-
nested deeply
in the rattan chair

With the two words "nested" and "rattan" we are taken back to our elemental past, a retreat to an almost pre-cognitive state of sorrow.

spring loneliness-
it falls short of the surf
this stone I toss

It's no small irony that this is the second time in two weeks I ran across this poem; the first was when it was anthologized in Haiku: the Poetry of Nature which I reviewed last week.

a moth dances into the flame...
the nape of the man's neck
draws me in

Once again pacing, as with Noyes poem above, plays an integral part in the poem. The pacing of the line draws us in, as it does its actor, into the flame.

As was mentioned above, Noyes, in the column "Favorite Haiku," does not disappoint. Here are 3 exemplary works:

a child rolls a hoop into autumn

anne mckay

Noyes esteem for this poem is large, as it should be. It doesn't get much better than this.

from leafless trees
crow follows crow
into a cold wind

Martin Lucas

He finds he remembers Bash 's "crow on a bare limb" haiku, as I did, and compares it favorable - how could I not concur.

wind change-
the tumbleweed now chases
the kitten

George Swede

Swede is one of the finest poets working today. The playfulness of this haiku disguises how it embraces bigger things in a commonplace scene. Humorous and resonant, a hard won combination on the best of days.

Finally, there is

soap bubbles burst-
the tiniest sounds

Izak Bouer

from a review of the book Go to the Pine (per Bash 's instruction, I guess). This little two-liner contains the world, the universe, in its representing.

Frequently, HCR is accompanied by mini-broadsides, called "Haiku Canada Sheets," by individual poets and this time was no exception.  The sheets are a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper, folded twice width-wise, and printed on both sides, leaving plenty of room for poems to breath in an economical format (one I've occasionally used for Lilliput broadsides). This time round there is an outstanding little collection of 12 haiku entitled marionette on a shelf by Angela Leuck.  It is something of a lyrical chronicle of a relationship, from first touch to final regrets.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

Marionette on a shelf-
his fingers know
how to move me

his smile-
the slow smooth bend
of the river

January midnight
letting my hair fall loose
snow tumbles from trees

colder nights-
longing
just for longing

Angela Leuck

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This week's featured poem is from Lilliput Review #131, July 2003, and if unusual in form for Lillie, is spot-on subject-wise.   Hope you like it.

On the Habit of Verse

Writing verse is like the proverb

About the drinking of wine,
Apt and perfectly true:

First you write the verse,
Then the verse writes the verse,
And finally the verse writes you.

Anthony Harrington

if only she were here
for me to nag...
Chrysanthemum Festival wine

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue 

In an editorial note to this haiku, David says that "This haiku refers (fondly) to Issa's wife, Kiku, who died earlier that year. Kiku means "chrysanthemum" in Japanese, so the Chrysanthemum Festival naturally reminds Issa of his lost Kiku."   The sense is certainly there without the note, but the dual nature of the word Kiku in the poem is not.  This example heightens a very important aspect of haiku that is most often lost in translation: wordplay, particularly punning.




best,
Don

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Basho's Journey Continues & Dancing with Mr. B.

A couple of quick notes and then it's onto the continuing saga of Basho's journey. I was really happy to find out that the Voices and Visions series is currently available via the Annenberg Media site. The good news is that all 13 programs are streamable on line for free with a free signup. The bad news is the series and individual titles are pricey: $39.95 each, $389 for the series. That being said, however, they are available on DVD for the first time and this series is about as good as it gets in its treatment of classic American poets. I have used excerpts from these programs in a poetry appreciation class (the Robert Frost video is particularly fine) I've conducted in the past and plan to use them in the future. If I can come up with the dough, I'll definitely be investing.

I ran across another posting of a Brautigan poem on a Live Journal site that was too good not to share:

Star Holes

I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,

watching light
pour itself into
me.

The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.

I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
faraway.

Richard Brautigan

I may be doing a blog only haiku challenge in the future, with print publication of the winner in a future issue of Lilliput Review and also a neat prize for the winner. More on that in a future post but, for now, I will say that all of this is Basho-related.

Over the past week I've been immersing myself in a variety of Basho translations. At work I'm reading Basho's Haiku: Selected Poems by Matsuo Basho translated by David Landis Barnhill, which I'll be getting to in a future post. At home I've just finished up On Love and Barley translated by Lucien Styrk and have been dipping into a number of volumes by the classic haiku commentator, R. H. Blyth, concerning Basho. Blyth is amazing, his knowledge of haiku all-encompassing, and he always manages to off-handedly put in a word about Wordsworth or Lawrence or Whitman, so much so that I have to admit I actually like a critic. Hmn, I've been a bit faint of late, perhaps I need to take my temperature.

It took me quite sometime to get with the flow of Stryk's Basho but once I did there was much to appreciate there. Of the 250 plus poems here, I marked off 15 as being particularly noteworthy. The virtue of Stryk's translation also exhibits its flaw: brevity. These are stripped down to the barest bones. Most are under 10 words, some less than five. When the translations work, they are like the Eastern style of brushwork art; a stroke here, a bird, a few there, an entire mountain range. The brevity suggests boundless possibility and the reader fills in the details. When they fall flat, there is simply nothing, in a most unzen-like way. The ultimate success of the work, I believe, is that some of those that fall flat for me may work for someone else and vice versa. Ultimately, it is Basho who shines through and I suspect the less-is-more approach might have appealed to his monk-like sensibility. He certainly knew how to pack a rucksack with the minimal amount of things!

Here's a few highlights that grabbed me:


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If I'd the knack
I'd sing like
cherry flakes falling.

Skylark on moor -
sweet song
of non-attachment.

Cormorant fishing
how stirring
how saddening.

Come see real
flowers
of this painful world.

Morning-glory -
it, too,
turns from me.

Man's end -
a bamboo shoot,
or less.

Year-end sprucing,
carpenter
hanging his own shelf.

Summer grasses,
all that remains
of soldiers' dreams.

June rain,
hollyhocks turning
where sun should be.


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The "summer grasses" haiku is one that I featured in another translation in a previous post. Stryk does it with more economy and equal effect, I believe. It is all, perhaps, a matter of taste, but the more translations I read, the fuller the picture of the original poet, Basho, I seem to get. The verse about the cormorant fishing perhaps needs a gloss. Fisherman commonly used the cormorant to fish by tying a string around its neck so when the bird snared a fish it couldn't swallow and the "fisherman" would simply remove the fish and put the bird back in the water. Not quite fishing with hand grenades, but certainly in the same mode. What really captures the true Basho spirit here is that he is both stirred and saddened, he still sees the miracle of nature despite the appalling behavior of nature's "highest creation", man.

Cover Art by Guy Beining

This week's featured back issue is #160, from November 2007. Enjoy. Beginning next week, we'll going into the way back machine to sample issues from places long ago and faraway.


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in
cottonwood
bark's cleft

a lichen
buddha

John Martone

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#213
Only a wisp
Of cloud above,
But like a
Sacred Song
It pointed the way.

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

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Crows sitting on naked trees. Expecting snow.

Alan Catlin

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No appetite
I have no appetite for verse,
but for the velvet vesture
of lamb's ear savored.
between my lips, tonight,
your lobes and limbs
wooly sward and bole,
succulent mullein, growing
virgate among your leaves.

Jeanne Lesinski

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two wings per pigeon
and this is where they gather
on a wire
in the city
Ah, what do I know

Shawn Bowman

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washing
dishes first
then shaving

John Martone

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Till next time,

Don