John Bennett: Battle Scars

When it comes to class acts in the poetry world, only a handful come close to Henry Denander's Kamini Press.  I've waxed on and on about the press previously, with review of two previous publications.  Pictured above, and excerpted below, is another fine volume from Mr Denander:  John Bennett's Battle Scars.


Battle Scars is something of an anomaly:  it feels as though Bennett has invented a new form, an astute amalgam of the the short poem and the aphorism.  Though the work is in natural language, or perhaps because it is, the pacing is precise. There is no mistaking Bennett's opinion on a particular subject; he is straightforward, plain-spoken, cynical, perceptive, and sarcastic.  All of which add up to one thing.

He is battle scarred.

In one little book, Bennett has solved the age-old conundrum of experience versus learning.  In Battle Scars, you may learn, at what seems as close to first hand as you can get, from someone else's hard won experience.

Need an example?

Lacking

We will
not do
what we
need to
do to
save ourselves.

We do not
have it
in us.

How's that for an empirical statement on the human experience?  New agers need not apply here.  Self-helpers, keep on walking.

Even zen-sters seem to be nodding appreciatively, or maybe that's just a no.  Hmn.

The Herd

The herd
remains happy
until
slaughter time.

Ouch.  Is this guy over the edge?  No, wait, here you go:

Reading Tea Leaves

The less
you know about
what's going on
the better
you can
see what's
coming.

Ok, so maybe what's coming ain't so hot, but here's a bit of survival technique.  Suddenly, all three poems come into stark relief; what they have in common is a point of convergence from which we can learn quite a lot.

What might that be?  The thread running through all three pieces is not fatalism or misanthropy or even old school Darwinism.  What we have here is a heightened, unsentimental perception of the human psyche, with all its warts, foibles, and limitations.

What is is.

Is "Reading Tea Leaves" the answer - it would seem that the very title isn't holding out any unadulterated hope.  But seeing patterns seems to be a help, be they in tea leaves or herds or a certain something lacking.

There are 30 of these little bon mots here, ready to pop in your metaphoric gullet, tasty as all get out, but there's a caution.  Chew well; chew very well, indeed, if digestion is your intent.  Reflux can be a nasty condition.

It leaves scars.

Hospitality

I tell
people  I'm
not one
of them &
they laugh
& say
have a
beer

John Bennett

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Lilliput Review #141 was originally published in January 2005.  Today's featured poem comes from that issue.   For 6 more poems from the same issue, check out these two posts.  Enjoy.

train
toward home
fog
on both sides
of the bridge

Pamela Miller Ness

night mist--
the horse remembers
the bridge's hole

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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A Haiku Moment in James Joyce's The Dead

Note:  In order to give a break to reader's who have patiently followed the first two installments (one and two) of my review of The Little Treasury of Haiku, I've decided to post this take on a very particular aspect of the lyricism of James Joyce's "The Dead."  Next week will be the 3rd and final installment, whether I'm done or not.

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The climactic moments of James Joyce's seminal story "The Dead" are among the most renowned in the history of Western literature. The story is relatively simple though, as with all things Joyce, its unveiling is subtle, precise, and powerful.

Gabriel Conroy and his wife, Greta, attend Christmas festivities in Dublin at the home of his elderly aunts, the story being set around the beginning of the 20th century. In the telling, the story is rich with interior revelation, and what is ultimately discovered is that Greta is pining away for her long dead lover, Michael Furey.

Gabriel finds himself left in the impotent position of being jealous of a dead man. Greta has cried herself to sleep in a fit of sorrow and Gabriel sits by his wife, thinking, and gradually begins to fall asleep himself.  The snow hitting upon the window pane echoes the gravel thrown against Greta's window by dying Michael Furey.

That's all you need to know to read the closing moments of this fine story, which I will quote at length for their beauty alone (if you haven't read the story and wish to, or haven't read it in awhile, you can find it here or download and listen to it here):

She was fast asleep.

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

The last paragraph is really unparalleled in lyric prose, as fine a passage in English as ever written.

So, how did we arrive here, you may ask?  While reading a classic winter haiku the other day, I was suddenly reminded of this scene from "The Dead " and was struck by how very Eastern, in both spirit and execution, the moment is.

Snow falling, falling, gently falling, over all, the living and the dead.  In that thought is the essence of haiku itself, in both philosophy and revelation.  In the narrator's mind, he suddenly envisions how we all, the dead and the living, are unified in nature,  the soft covering of snow enveloping us acting as a reminder of what we often casually repress.  We are one with the earth and with life, its transitory nature and its eternal now.

You may see a cinematic replication of this final scene on youtube: it comes from John Huston's excellent adaptation, which finally found its way to DVD at the end of 2010.

Obviously, the universal quality of this moment crosses cultures and time; it is, simply put, the human condition.  But whenever evoked by an artist of the quality of a Joyce or Buson, an Austen or a Bashō, that very simplicity is revealed in a richness and texture which makes everything worthwhile.

Another great master, R. H. Blyth, was fond of finding haiku in Western art so, though it is seemingly odd, it is also interesting that Mr. Joyce makes two appearances at the Hut in the same week.

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This week's Lilliput Review archive poems shared the same page from issue #137, May 2004.  Here they electronically replicate that feat.  Enjoy.



Cemetery gate
swinging back and forth
meeting shadows of maples

Rebecca Lily

two years since your death ...
in this September sky
a contrail

Pamela Miller Ness

First Month--
at the cat's grave too
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Issa's Sam Hamill

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been looking at the small (literally: 4.25 x 5") collection of Sam Hamill's translations entitled The Sound of Water.  It literally fits in your back or shirt pocket and is chock-full of poems.  Though I didn't begin with a plan - oh, how rarely I do - I seem to have divided the contents into 4 posts for the purposes of review.  Two weeks ago, I covered Bashō, last week Buson, and this week it will be Issa.  Soon I hope to cover the final section of miscellaneous poets.

I've tried again to select poems that I feel very good in illustrating the poet's work, the philosophy of haiku, and adeptness of the translator.   In addition, I look for works that have not been featured previously, quite a feat when it comes to the work of this blog's namesake.  The commentary is minimal as Issa hardly needs an assist from an amateur admirer.

The spring begins: old
stupidities repeated,
new errs invented

With his admission of his own faults, Issa draws us into the fact that errors are the human condition, it is what we do, even as we hopefully begin another year (the 1st day of spring and New Years coinciding in historical Japan, coming as it did in the 1st weeks of February).

Brilliant moon,
is it true that you too
must pass in a hurry

Even the moon too must pass, both literally and figuratively; all life, animate and inanimate, shares the ultimate truth at the bottom of all great classical haiku.

What's the lord's vast wealth
to me, his millions and more?
Dew on trembling grass

Another way of saying the same thing, this time in human terms of the frailty of all attachment and craving. Whether you seek out the noble truth or no, it will most certainly find you.

Before this autumn wind
even the shadows of mountains
shudder and tremble

Issa beats the drum, softly and loudly, quickly and slowly; the image here is lovely, almost Buson-like, and resonates to the very center of the earth, and perhaps even the universe.

I wish she was here
to listen to my bitching
and enjoy this moon

Love and loss makes the human condition so full of joy, so full of sorrow - this memory is both at once, in the now of the moment.

A world of dew,
and within each dewdrop
a world of struggle

Like his more famous "The world of dew / is a world of dew - / and yet, and yet ...," this haiku cuts to the heart of things, in an even more fatalistic way, if possible. Not only is life as transient as a drop of dew, it is a constant struggle.

In the midst of this world
we stroll along the roof of hell
gawking at flowers

This is one of Issa's more famous pieces and, though this is a particularly wordy rendition, I like Hamill's choice of verbs in "stroll" and "gawking," conveying, I feel, the haphazardness, the randomness of existence.

A world of trials,
and if the cherry blossoms,
it simply blossoms

Philosophically, this is the other side of the leaf of the dewdrop poem above.   This is the lesson of Buddhism, the lesson of the classic haiku masters.  To put it even more succintly: "Blossom, fool!"

Just to say the word
home, that one word alone
so pleasantly cool

This last haiku is all the more poignant when we realize that Issa, an orphan, often felt the lack of what  home really is.  Through all his trials, however, he was able to enjoy the family he helped found, if for a brief time.    In English the word "home" has at its center the famed Sanskrit sound, the mantra of mantras. Is there a linguistic relationship?  I don't know.  Is there an aural or oral or vibrational one?  I'm thinking there is.

I've been wrong before.

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This week's selection from the archive, a tanka by the fine poet Pamela Miller Ness, goes out to writers, especially poets, everywhere.  It originally appeared in Lilliput Review, #129.

Dancing Ganesha,

god with the elephant head,

lend me

your tusk dipped in ink, let me

write long, long as the Ganges

Pamela Miller Ness

autumn wind--
Issa's heart and mind
stirring

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don

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Six Gallery Press Reading

Photo by Jessica Fenlon

Last Saturday's Six Gallery Press reading at Modern Formations went very well. As with last August's reading, I read a mix of past Lilliput poems and some of my own work. Here are the poems from Lillie:

National Poetry Day

This being that fine occasion
to honor appreciative friends
with a wisdomy verse
pulled from one's hip
I am telling myself to first
keep straight my pockets
so as not to go
blow my nose into
William Carlos Williams

Richard Swanson

only one flower
is needed to answer
your question

Stanford Forrester

winter haiku
here, we have five or six
words for snow
and they all start with fuck

Mark DeCarteret

Because

You are tired, because I thirst for
salt, we turn to each other.
You are barefoot. It is winter.
This is going to be a difficult story.

Gayle Elen Harvey

an echo

The grassy grassy grassy
--plain
reaches out across across the road
--the road
cutting man's lifeline in two two
trying trying to reclaim for mother
--nature nature
what is by all rights
hers and hers and hers

Michael Estabrook

How Frightening to be the Male

a pair of cardinals on my neighbor's
fence: the male--so bright, so eye-
catching, so out-there, so
dispensable

Kelley Jean White

Cannibal

When you've rent the flesh and sinew
from my supple skeleton and you've
sucked the last sweet drop of marrow
leaving lonely, brittle bones
will you save the jagged splinters
to adorn your chieftain's chest
or scatter them like toothpicks
over yesterday's dung.

Sue De Kelver

Each step into simplicity :: undoes the weave

Grant Hackett

We forget we're mostly water
till the rain falls
and every atom
in our body
starts to go home

Albert Huffstickler

¶blue thorn gallop rose
why does language have to be so perfect?

Charlie Mehrhoff

TAOUBT

Ray Skjelbred

In addition to the Lilliput poems, I opened with a quote from Jim Carroll, and a dedication to his memory. The quote:

"It's too late
-to fall in love with Sharon Tate.
-And it's too soon
-to trace the path of the bullet
-in the brain of Reverend Moon."

Jim Carroll

I followed the Lilliput reading with 7 poems of my own, with only one that I'd read in August. Though I practiced "an echo" by Michael Estabrook, it was difficult to get the right aural effect and I'm afraid I didn't do it justice. Otherwise, I think it went over pretty well. Not too shabby for an old man decidedly out of practice. Overall, it was a solid reading by all. Che Elias from Six Gallery did a great job picking readers and so my personal thanks to him. I was particularly taken with the work of M. Callen, Scott Silsbe, Karen Lillis and Bill Hughes but, again, all the readers impressed.



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Since this is a week folks are likely on the road for the holiday, I'll keep it brief. I'm in the process of combing through all the poems for the Bashô Haiku Challenge again. Though I've made a large preliminary selection, I'm going through every poem once more to make sure I didn't miss anything and that what I previously set aside is actually up to snuff. Editing the mag all these years has taught me to space out multiple readings of particular items since mood, attention, and physical condition can actually effect how one approaches work. I read most work first thing in the morning while I'm fresh and rested and save the mundane stuff of replying, printing, collating etc. for later in the day. I'm hoping to make an announcement of the winners by December 2nd, December 9th at the latest.



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This week's featured issue is #150, a broadside of 11 poems by powerful tanka poet, Pamela Miller Ness. Enjoy.

Autumn again
in the Japanese garden;
leaves
of last year's euonymus
burn still in my journal.

A bud
of the red anemone
ready to burst . . .
the child
she never bore.

Years
after her passing
on the path
I greet my neighbor
in Mother's voice.

Pamela Miller Ness

a wind-blown boat
a skylark
crossing paths

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

And thanks to Jessica Fenlon for sending along the photo of me cawing "Crow" from the reading.




best,
Don

Donald Ray Pollock and Keddy Ann Outlaw

Congratulations go out to Donald Ray Pollock on the publication and largely positive reception of his book of linked short stories, Knockemstiff. Typical reviews have appeared in the L.A. Times and the N.Y. Times. Pollock published three poems in Lilliput back in the late 90's: "Knockemstiff Tattoo #1" in issue #91, "Knockemstiff Tattoo #5" in #94, and "the patriarchs of garage" in #98. All three issues are still in print and available. From #94:


the patriarchs of garage

argue clutch, talk flywheel, question
carburetor. they scratch loose nuts,
pass another pint. they sand, weld
wrench; dig deep into wrinkled packs
of red man, five brothers. they worry
rust, prime and paint. They squat like
kids on cracked concrete and agree with
my father that memory is grease is oil
is water is gasoline is
fading.

Donald Ray Pollock

A shout out also goes to Keddy Ann Outlaw, whose beautiful, atmospheric photos are featured in one of the two new issues of Lillie (#161). She has mounted one of the photos on her excellent library blog, Speed of Light. Congrats particularly for her recent excellent article in Library Journal, entitled "Born Together: the Literature of Twins."

This week's feature issue is #150, a broadside of the moving, resonant tanka of Pamela Miller Ness, originally published in July 2006. This selection from that 11 tanka set is one of characteristically deep emotion and beauty:




Night
of thunder, thunder
in the dream
I fold laundry
with my dead mother.




A bud
of the red anemone
ready to burst . . .
the child
she never bore.




Kandinsky’s
Impression No. 3:
floating
above a yellow field
the piano’s soul.




Indian summer ~
still my daughter
carries
unripe huckleberries
in her burden basket.




Issues 161 and 162 continue to ship as the flu gradually recedes in my rear view mirror. Best, till next time.

Don

Robert Service, Jean Shepherd, & Gary Hotham

Artwork by Guy Beining

As inevitably happens from week to week, I think of something to share and, in the press of getting other things done, forget some detail or other. One thing I really wanted to post last week relates to the recent anniversary of the birth of Robert Service (January 16^th). Though I’m not much for narrative poetry, the uniqueness and power of the work of Service is something it would be foolish to ignore. As with all great poets, Service had an insight and overwhelming empathy with the human condition; yes, empathy, because, I believe he wasn’t particularly happy about it but he knew it to the core, not unlike Bukowski, the subject of last weeks musings.

In any case, what rescues Service from morose oblivion is humor; an overriding, abundant, dark, deep sense of humor. So, for his birthday, here is a real treat: a dramatic reading by another student of the human condition, radio monologist and raconteur of many an obscure topic, Jean Shepherd. Admittedly someone who is little known outside the New York metropolitan area (aside from the adaptation of his work in the holiday perennial A Christmas Story), Shep was something of a rite of passage for the young in the late 50’s and early 60’s, one of the last threads to old school radio. He had a soft spot for poetry in general (he once did a whole show reading haiku translations of the masters, deadpan, with “Oriental” music wafting in the background, to somewhat limited success) and Service in particular and, on odd nights when in a certain mood, he would break out the Service and regale the WOR airwaves with tales of the Yukon. So, in celebration of Service’s birthday and in concert with the recent cold snap that has much of the country longing for a little heat not unlike ol' Sam McGee, here is The Cremation of Sam McGee. For more Shepherd, unexcerpted from his natural environment, see the archive of shows Mass Backwards, by Max Schmidt of WBAI, which has a permanent link at the bottom of the sidebar on this page.

I’ve received news that Gary Hotham’s Missed Appointment has been reviewed in the British magazine Presence. Here is a copy of that review by Matthew Paul:

Missed Appointment, Gary Hotham

22pp, $4 inc. postage ($3 within USA).

Cheques payable to Don Wentworth, from:

Lilliput Review, 282 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201, USA

Gary Hotham has been writing haiku for four decades and his economical style is one of the most distinctive within the homogeneity that comprises much of the English-language haiku published today.

In a brief introduction, Hotham approvingly quotes the belief of Billy Collins, the American 'mainstream' and haiku poet, that haiku contains "a very deep strain of existential gratitude" and that "[a]lmost every haiku says the same thing: 'It's amazing to be alive here.'" This 'Modest Proposal Chapbook' of just 15 haiku exemplifies Hotham's ability to be absolutely in tune with what it means, at any given time, to exist. Quite simply, and in plain language adorned only by mundane adjectives, Hotham writes about things that most haiku poets would overlook:

no where else

but the next flower---

afternoon butterflies

over the parade---

a window no one

looks out of

Whether other writers would ignore such subject matter deliberately or merely by not paying enough attention to the world around them is open to debate. Hotham certainly attunes himself and his readers to moments which, rather than being vitally significant, could be considered trivial, perhaps to the point of banality; but, for my money, the humble and persistently downbeat nature of these poems is admirable in a small dose such as Missed Appointment provides. In longer collections of Hotham's work, though, I'd need a dollop or two of verbosity to offset and lighten the minimalism.

Whatever the merits of his style, one fact about Hotham surely cannot be disputed: that he writes excellent, poignant senryu, two of which I'll end with:

farewell party---

the sweetness of the cake

hard to swallow

Dad's funeral---

the same knot

in my tie

Review by Matthew Paul

This week, the following poems are from LR #141, from January 2007. If anyone is following along, you might notice I’ve skipped #140. #140 is a broadside by Alan Catlin in honor of Cid Corman, entitled “For Cid.” It is a 7 poem collection of short, delicate work which would not be served well by excerpting, though many of the poems stand well alone.

Roethke wrote:

It will come again.

Be still. Wait

How to embrace the stillness.

How to wait with grace.

Pamela Miller Ness

pollen-heavy

a bee easily clears

the headstone

LeRoy Gorman

What is there

before or after

experience?

Everything waits in the dark

for you to say,

Come in.

David Lindley

My heart is torn

since I’ve seen you.

Like the watermark in Osaka Bay

I measure my life

waiting to meet you again.

Princess Motoyoshi

translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

Finally, let me recommend this morning’s poem on The Writer’s Almanac: “How to Kill” by Keith Douglas, who died in the Normandy invasion. It puts a human face and sensibility on the deaths that continue today as war rages on.

best,

Don