Customer Reviews

Morning Haiku

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sonia Sanchez, <strong>Morning Haiku</strong> (Beacon Press, 2010)

One of my favorite examples of people just not getting it is that of the Cult of Lovecraft. Hundreds of authors from August Derleth to Fred Chappell, of all people, have written direct-descendant works of Lovecraft. They vary widely in quality, of course, but most of them have the same basic format: take H. P.'s crrepy-crawlies and integrate them into the author's own style. Which is all well and good, and some of what has emerged from that process is pretty darned good. But then came a chap named Thomas Ligotti, who turned everything on its head. Instead of taking the creepy-crawlies and abandoning the style, Ligotti writes horrific little stories that have completely integrated Lovecraft's style, but with nary a hint of Cthulhu and company to be found. In short, Thomas Ligotti <em>gets it</em>, in a way no other author has, and as a result his stories are more "Lovecraftian" than any raft of August Derleths or Ramsey Campbells.

Needless to say, there's a parallel to be had here. American writers, or perhaps I should say "attempters", of haiku take the creepy-crawlies, most notably the syllable count, without really grasping the concepts that lie behind haiku: economy (Henderson, in <em>Haiku in English</em>, notes that 5/7/5 generally results in haiku that are too wordy. Indeed.), mysticism, nature. Nature, in fact, is so important that haiku without a link to nature aren't haiku at all, they're actually senryu. Very few American authors understand this (in fact, the only one that comes to mind off the top of my head is Nick Mamatas, whose <em>Cthulhu Senryu</em> is a perfect example).

I've read god knows how many American collections of stuff pretending to be haiku. Most of it doesn't even rate as decent senryu. And then there is Sonia Sanchez' <em>Morning Haiku</em>, which is the Thomas Ligotti of Asian poetic form, with the allowance that Sanchez is mostly writing senryu here.

"trees praising our innocence
new territories dressing our
limbs in starched bones"
("15 haiku for Toni Morrison")

Sanchez is totally focused on the image here, as regards the construction of an individual senryu, and because of that, she gets it in a way few others do. That alone makes this not only well worth the price of admission, but most likely the best book of senryu-masquerading-as-haiku by an American author you will read all year, no matter what year you read it in.

On the other hand, now that I've praised the tree, I've got to mention at least in passing that the forest is a little too message-based. Sanchez' excellent focus on the construction of each piece is just as evident when it comes to the subjects she picks, and so she often ends up paying lip service to the mystical/natural elements of the form at best. This can be a bit disappointing at times, given how well her talent at working this form comes through again and again in the book:

"footprints blooming
in the night remember
your blood"
("14 haiku for Emmett Louis Till")

...but don't let that stop you from reading this one. You want to. *** ½

Dr. Sanchez, has again proven that she is one of America's greatest poets. Morning Haiku challenges the reader to look inside their own spritual journey.