apology moon: Cherie Hunter Day - Small Press Friday (the Saturday Edition)

Reading is, in a sense, a communion with self.

Cherie Hunter Day is a fine tanka and haiku poet whose work I always enjoy reading precisely because I find myself going inward to search out both completion and meaning: completion of the work at hand, as some of the finest haiku let a reader's experience temper the direction of the work, and meaning, in the looking inward sense, where a spark is set off by the friction of haiku's traditionally disparate elements.  

Her new collection, apology moon, from red moon press, is contemplative in the best senses of the word, as in searching, understanding, and revealing.

The first poem is a moment perfectly realized, grammatically
 

looking up
rules of punctuation —
green hills

and otherwise. This is truly a poem the reader completes. At first, it seems as though it might be a glib, throwaway image, but the longer one thinks, the deeper one goes.

There are other rules beyond grammar.

insomnia
two parts doubt
one part moon

We've all had this experience, at least those who have a conscience, and perhaps even those who don't. Though the phrasing is so precise as to be almost aphoristic, ultimately what emanates from these lines is truth, truth and nature.

azaleas as afterthought as afterword

What might this be about, eh? Again, there is almost a glibness here. In addition, I had to go back and read the last word more than once because I found myself saying in my mind "afterwards." The persistence of this mistake is, I think, significant, adding a possible 6th word to a 5 word poem that has something of a short story quality about it.

And something more.

cranial sutures
the continents no longer
fit together

Telescoping is one of the most effective techniques the purveyor of the brief form can use - from the particular to the universal, 3/5ths of a mile in 10 seconds. There is an ominous quality on both levels, or threads, of this ku, and, in a sense, a soothing one, too.

before us the wind inside milkweed

Before can mean so many things, can it not? And, yes, there might be another touch of telescoping here because, with the wind and the milkweed, there might just be a sort of chicken and the egg conundrum.

And then there is the literal - what the wind does with seed pods.  

middle age I believe the azaleas pink lies

Might this not be chapter two, or part two, of the "short story" noted above? I can imagine that, somewhere between afterthought and afterword (and right around afterwards), is the middle age revelation of deceit. 

But surely this is a reader bringing her interpretation? What has this to do with these poems? 

Completion, perhaps.

red woods —
the tour bus
waits for us

Time has put its stamp all over this poem - take away for the tourist is revelation ... if you want it.

hot flash
all of the lily pads
touching

If you've never had a hot flash, boyfriend, certainly you could pass on this. But if you have, you know truth.

salt wind ripples on an inner lake

Here is dovetailing or telescoping or whatever you want to label it, used to perfection to illustrate, among other things (i.e. like its point), the relevance and power of the monostitch as an important contemporary form.

donating
my son's cello —
red leaves in the wind 

There are so many possibilities in this particular ku I'll leave it to you, reader, to finish it as you will.

red moon press continues to put out some of the most outstanding volumes of haiku being published today. Grab a copy of apology moon, a little small press gem. It will light up your autumn evening sky.

~~~~~~~ 

 Artwork by Kōrin Ogata

spring rain--
thatched with azaleas
the doghouse 

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Lorine Niedecker: from Blue Chicory - Small Press Friday

In his preface to Blue Chicory, a collection of the work of Lorine Niedecker, edited by Cid Corman, he noted:

The poems in the first part of this collection, heretofore unseen in book form, are those that seem largely to have been "abandoned"  by the poet as perhaps not up to her best work, since they were available for the Fulcrum edition of The Collected Poems. Nevertheless, they seem to me to warrant safer keeping here - even when they are variants on other pieces.

Here are four very brief poems from the first part of Blue Chicory - it is hard to deny Cid's assertion that they "warrant safer keeping."

                  Frog noise
                  suddenly stops

Listen!
They turned off
    their lights 

~~~~~

In the transcendence 
of convalescence
the translation
of Bashō

These two poems follow one upon the other in Blue Chicory and it would be a stretch to imagine that they are unrelated, either for the poet or the editor that has placed them thus. The first, though not a variant of Bashō's famed frog ku, does bring it to mind, centering as it does on sound, and being placed as it is before "In the transcendence," which does reference the earlier master poet.

This second poem at first recalls, for those familiar with the classic Japanese haiku masters, Shiki rather than Bashō, but upon close inspection such speculation is most probably beside the point. 

The moment captured here is simply as stated. All who have experienced prolonged convalescence or illness know what the transcendence is of which she speaks. To encounter a particular translation of Bashō during (or perhaps sparked by) such a volatile state might make for an astounding moment, indeed.

The radio talk this morning
was of obliterating
the world

I notice fruit flies rise 
from the rind
of the recommended 
melon  

Here is a poem truly in the spirit of haiku, even if worked out more to tanka length, and beyond. The connection which crackles in the rubbing together of two seemingly disparate elements is the essence of haiku.

And what you liked
or did -
no matter

once the moon
dipped down
and fish rose
from under 

This is an ominous tone that certainly relates to the first stanza of "The radio"." Just swap out the second stanzas in these two poems to see how tonally similar they truly are, and how very ominous, too.

Cid concludes his introduction with the following:

Her father planted trees for their community, where they stand still and more tall. She planted words where "carp-fed roots" sing every moment we light them that much taller yet. I leave you with her flowering shade.

Published by the Elizabeth Press back in 1976, this is not an easy volume to get a hold of economically (check the first link above for possible copies). More small press history than Small Press Friday, it would behoove a reader to keep an eye out for a copy to grace shelf and mind.

~~~~~ 

old pond--
please, you go first
frog jumping

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

 

 

 

best,

Don

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Jeffrey Woodward: Evening in the Plaza - Small Press Friday

Haibun and I have had a rocky relationship over the years. I expect a certain something from the form and, it would seem, I'm very particular about that certain something. 

Let's go right to the heart of the matter: if the haiku doesn't work on its own, I'm out of there. 

Is this fair? Am I upholding my end of the relationship, am I demanding too much of a form that isn't simply haiku but haibun, the alchemical amalgam of prose and verse?

I suppose I'm not being fair but I've set a standard and I'm sticking with it. 

I'm happy to report that so is the poet Jeffrey Woodward, in his fine new collection, Evening in the Plaza: Haibun & Haiku, published by Tournesol Books of Detroit, MI. 

Evening is comprised of 40 titled haibun an 48 haiku, the later divided into 4 separate sections. Some of the haibun are outstanding, most notably "A Small Funeral," "Questions for the Flowers," "Family Album," "The Sweet Wild Grass," "Imago," and "Finis Terrae." There are many more that grabbed me, but these are the ones that had that special mix of great execution and personal (to me) appeal.

I'm sure there are others that will grab other readers.

A Small Funeral

Enough:   a    condolence   that  affords no
comfort, a eulogy too feeble to enliven the
perfect composure of its subject, a sermon
that  promises peace where peace will  not
serve ...

Against fair hopes  and  expectations,  to settle
now, as one must, for the recognized rites and
to commit this being,  so precious, to a lasting
rest, the homily and liturgy an obligation:

a book of wisdom
is set before the world
and autumn deepens

The  23rd  Psalm  recited  as,  also,  the  "Our
Father," the congregation files out and forms
a corridor as  if  to wait  not  upon this  final 
parting  but upon  the  arrival  of  a  dignitary.

a tiny coffin
ventures out like a whisper
into the bright day

 

Not far behind, there on the steps before the
great door of the church:

late autumn-
about the parish priest
the wind is black

The emotion, the power of this piece is almost beyond words. Where there is "a condolence / that affords not comfort" and a promised "peace where peace will not / serve ...," what might be said?

And then the poet says it.

Here, in words that follow the lamentation of neither comfort nor peace, comes just what is missing: a true eulogy, a sermon on loss, on pain and on sorrow. As the poem unfolds, "this being, so precious" begins to realize a final rest; the book of wisdom open, but it is autumn that keens, it is autumn that deepens. 

Now the being, the lost one, is a dignitary in the emotion of the attendees, played out in a ritual service after the formal one. The 23rd Psalm and Our Father echo, but it is the coffin itself that actually speaks, whispering out into the bright day the true message.

All ends with a perfect haiku - the wind, normally invisible, is manifest, and it is, yes, black.

What might be thought of as a companion haibun follows:

 ~~~~~

The Sweet Wild Grass

    That's    where    we   stood,     that's    where
    beforehand we  knew we'd end  up, a  gang of
    boys, on a hot midsummer day, loitering about
    a low retainer wall that marked an entrance to
    a   village   cemetery—someone    scuffling   his
    tennis  shoes in the  gravel, someone   chewing
    on a blade  of sweet  wild grass  plucked  from 
    the  broad  field  across   the  road,   someone
    retelling  an  exaggerated  tale that   an   uncle 
    had told

     Then the funeral party came, everybody in 
    black, everybody wrinkled and dry like pale 
    dust,   everybody  shuffling  along  in  dead
    silence  except  for the muffled sobbing  of 
    somebody somewhere 

    A rote recitation
    of the 23rd Psalm 
    and cicadas 

    Then a man in black suit and tie, a lean man
    with  a shock of white  hair, approached us 
    from that party, approached with a slow but
    deliberate gait, and  he drew  near and drew 
    with him the hush of his black flock 

    But  before he  reached  that  wall, before he
    might come  so close as  to  brush us with his
    breath or tell us whatever it was he would tell, 
    our gang  jumped  up  and   scurried  over  the 
    road,  each  boy   then  looking  back  over  a
    shoulder
 

    going quietly
    into the deep
    grass of summer

 ~~~~~

 
This poem at once seems almost a companion piece to the earlier poem, yet, really, there is no telling the chronology and even if they are related. Still, I had a Rashomon feeling while reading it, as if I was seeing the same event from a different perspective. 

If possible, this piece is even more powerful than the previous. Here there is a lost innocence, not simply of the deceased, if something like this might ever be described as simple, but of the young observers.

Perhaps this was their companion - after the first death, as Dylan Thomas wrote - in any case, the power of the event is palpable. In its specificity, the poem almost crosses over into the domain of short story.

But the same might be said of many a haiku, which is the beauty of condensation. 

Speaking of haiku, there are a number of very fine one's here:

with every blackbird,
the sun, too, settles deeper
into the cold trees

There are many superior qualities to this poem, not the least of which is its literalness: the settling of the sun, in the form of the birds (or reflected on those forms), into the trees as it sets on the horizon.

In addition to literalness, there is the poem's allusiveness - one can't help but think of Basho's famed poem of autumn, tree, and crow: 

 

on a bare branch
a crow has settled
autumn dusk

Woodward's poem is no mere pastiche or homage: it inhabits the same universe, the same world, both again literally and also figuratively. 

a nest -
nothing more,
nothing less

Here is an object for contemplation, akin in some ways to the famed half a glass of water. The reader at first seems to have little to work with, but this is not so.

Not at all. 

the cobblestone
of the city's old quarter
and red leaves

This is a poem of layer upon layer upon layer. It is a poem of civilization, a poem of nature and, for man, above all, a poem of time. 

Ultimately, for me, it is a poem of stunning beauty, stumbled upon in an ancient square, in a forgotten city ... in an exciting new book.

A book I recommend for lovers of haibun, haiku, and poetry itself. 

~~~~~ 

Photo by Denis Collette

onlookers
at a funeral...
the autumn wind

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Old Pajamas: Biting The Buddha - Small Press Friday

Having previously reviewed Drenched Through at Old Age, by old pajamas, I've gone back to the well again to an earlier collection by him, entitled Biting the Buddha. Published by Blue Cottage press in 2000 ...

There is a noticeable difference in approach and style in this older volume; the newer book has no punctuation and an assured use of the monostich (there are none of the later in Biting the Buddha). Still, let's not get our knickers in a twist, eh - it is the message and the talent that should be in the forefront and so it will be in this overview.

From my lips rises the full moon
To stare at her white belly.

The mystery: origin, essence, and epicenter: the lips, the moon, the belly.

Enveloped so
        Inside me
The sudden rain
        Does not cool him.

Again, a mystery, this time one of identity, ego, and presence.

         In the air
A junkie's drawing...starved limbs
         Petals falling.

 
A lyrical little dirge, capturing at once the sadness and beauty of a life 'squandered,' and the rhyming echo.

Autumn gust,
Still leaves
          Scatter again.

This poem turns on the first word of line two: 'Still.'  To me, this feels like two contiguous moments, passing quickly.

How sweet the grass!
How calm a place
To lay skin and bone!

 
This resonates with philosophical beauty, dealing as it does with life and death and more, and a literalness that says it all, says it all ...

Dust rises
Restless in a dried field,
Shifting
             Foot to foot.

Ashes to ashes - there is a biblical quality, a mythic quality, a folklorish quality to what, in essence, is a simple observation, couple with a human echo that has its own chilling quality. A sister poem to "How sweet the grass," certainly.

Crushed by the wheel
The fox looks back.

 
There is more to this little two-line 'short-story' than meets the eye, eh, Mr. Fox?

The tide gone out,
I am left behind.

Oh, maggie and milly and molly and may ... the ocean dwarfs us all with dimension and perpective and loneness. So much cosmic detritus, so little time. 

  Across the marsh
All life flies on the wind
  Of a New Year.

There is a big picture perspective here; strangely enough my first free associative thought is of the first picture of the earth from space. 

Oh, there it is!

Biting the Buddha may be purchased directly from the author for $5, which covers the cost of the mailer, the postage and the book. Contact him at <blue cottage 2000 AT yahoo DOT com>, no spaces, and read AT for @ and DOT for . in order to avoid those pesky harvesting bots.

------

US Postal Service Stamp Commemorating 100 Years of Cherry Blossoms

in cherry blossom shade
there are even those
who hate this world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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William Killen - Winter: Small Press Friday

William Killen is a fine, traditional haiku poet in the best sense of the phrase, whose work has been featured here previously. The small, self-produced volume at hand, Haiku VI: Winter, is a lesson in the form and the life.

The collection itself is less about the individual impact of particular poems as it is about the sum of its parts, and the sum of its parts is winter. How things sound in winter; winter, the domain of the predator; winter, a world of contemplation and seclusion. 

Just how deeply perceptive this work is I only began to realize on  second and third readings. The word evocative comes to mind, the smells, the sights, sounds (and their silences), even the land and its creatures, including ourselves.

There is a spell cast here and its name is winter. Like Killen's beautifully rendered art that grace its pages, we feel its tone and mood.

It is a book which, like a deep meditation, forces you to slow down. 

If I was forced to choose, I have to say that it is nigh impossible to select a few poems that might be representative of what I'm trying so feebly to capture. That being said (when has impossible truly stopped anyone who was determined to try), here are 3 poems whose virtue is that they stand out, which is probably antithetical to the very point I'm trying to make.

more winter rain
the river is filled
with haiku

This is as about close as the poet gets to inserting personality into a poem and, for me, it is a fine, if slightly post-modern, exception.

After all, exception proves the rule, right?

first light
cock crows on and on
foggy morning

This poem is more typical of the overall tone - there is a fine mixture here of three senses: sight, sound, and touch. With dawn we begin to see, yet it is foggy, and cock's muted crowing conveys with sound (and, in a very real sense, tactility) what the sun does with sight.

first raindrops
warm midnight —
dead of winter

Here is solitude, season and mood, all captured in a tone, almost flattish, that is reminiscent of classical haiku. As with previous examples, the poet's closeness to nature is paramount - inside the home or hut, the poet feels and hears a particular mid-winter mood, what in the Eastern US is sometimes categorized as the January thaw. 

It is what the poet/narrator is thinking here that concerns us. Not necessarily the specifics, but what is thought, or might have been thought, or felt, or experienced under similar circumstances, not just by the narrator but by the reader, too.

In this case, as with "first light," a feeling is perfectly captured. 

Currently, I am reading a book entitled The Poetics of Space by Gaston Blanchard and, utilizing the image of the house, it explores creativity, the imagination, and the archetypal experiences of human beings. 

Haiku, particularly of the quality and tone of such a poet as William Killen, fits perfectly within Blanchard's thesis.

A true merging of East and West.

Killen's work is available directly from him. It contains 55 haiku, 14 fine pieces of art (in a variety of mediums: acrylic on paper, acrylic on canvas, ink, pen & color pencil, traditional ink brush, felt tip & color pencil, mixed media on paper, and ink & acrylic on paper), and a phenomenological approach to existence that might prompt the most jaded modern philosopher into a sense of wonder. The book is $10, plus $2 shipping, and can be acquired directly from the poet. Email him at wdkillen AT yahoo dot com (where the spaces are removed and read @ for AT and . for dot) for details. 

Alternately he may be contacted at his art website:

http://william-killen.artistwebsites.com/

or via the good ol' US Postal Service at 90 Tennessee St., Suite B, Murphy, NC  28906.

Artwork by William Killen

--------

Night Rain at Oyama by Toyokuni II

on me, on the mountain
we take our turns...
winter rain

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Charles Trumbull - A Five-Balloon Morning: Small Press Friday

Charles Trumbull is a poet of quiet, deep emotion. His haiku are ripples on the pond; the source invisible, yet of paramount importance.

A Five-Balloon Morning has a subtitle, New Mexico Haiku, and, though that sets the scene, it is in no sense strictly regional or limiting. In fact, as regular readers of haiku might attest, the more particular the focus, the greater the potential for a more universal theme - in the hands of the right poet, that is. 

Charles Trumbull is the right poet.  

raking into piles
leaves from a tree
I climbed as a boy

The great haiku poets, Bashō coming to mind here, can include an entire lifetime, or lifetimes in one three line verse. And that's what we have here. 


                                        first Christmas
                                     without my mother
                                   without my childhood


Time and memory intertwine again, with tone and subject that certainly is reminiscent of another of the great masters.

hometown visit
fine sand in the doorways
of vacant storefronts

I seem to be focusing on time here, but rather let's say the poet is. There is a sense not just of the past in these lines, but of the future, the reclaiming back of things as they were. Certainly thoughts such as these are never far away in a desert clime.

wild asters
brilliant in the field
after the fire

Nature again takes center stage - the wild joy of the first two lines is suddenly muted at the cause. Yet, still, the wild asters are brilliant and need we worry why?

wind-twisted juniper
at the precipice
you take my hand

This is a ku of balance, wherein the dual-hinge door of the second line swings both ways, perfectly. Certainly, the wind of the first line, even if not at the moment present, might conjure the caution in the third, at a pre or subconscious level.

in the dark corner
where the crucifix hung
a white shadow

There is something, always, about shadows - doppelgangers of sorts, and in this case the 'shadow' is white, and is a 'shadow' of something no longer there, something which perhaps no longer exists.

Yet something that persists.

There is a separate section in this collection entitled Trinity, which is about a visitation to the Trinity site in the desert where the first atomic bomb was detonated. Here are three ku from that powerful collection within a collection which grabbed 
me and held on:

Trinity site
in the guard's vehicle
fuzzy dice

The allusion to Einstein's remark about God and dice immediately leaps to mind and the reverberations take that mind to many a dark place.

we drive through the gate
feeling very American -
weeds through asphalt

The juxtaposition between feeling and reality here is more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps there is an implicit comparison between the weeds and the humans, perhaps not. 

What we do know is that they have both sprung up in a post-apocalyptic reality. 

squabbling children-
the grasshopper
hops away

Such a simple poem, such a complex world. Like how various animals are portrayed in horror movies - horses, dogs, cats - the grasshopper has its say.

This fine collection of contemporary haiku comes from Red Mountain Press. Trumbull has composed a set of poems that in some ways are like whispers, just barely heard, until we learn how to focus in on the sound. It isn't so much the volume of the sound as it is the locale.

It comes from within. 

-------

As a bit of a bonus to the work above, what follows is a video from the Haiku Foundation of Charles reading some haiku. This video is part of an ongoing series entitled The Haiku Foundation Readings and may be found in the Haiku Foundation Video Archive.

    -------

this world of ours--
so fast the bonfires
burn out

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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