This book covers three geographic locations, that of Britain, America and Australia, and poetry that’s an excitement of language yet still contained in tight cages called haiku. That’s what we are invited here to see, “the where and how of poets” contained in tight enclosures. I want the reader in me to have these four poets excite me in their approach to poetry, to language, to words, and to their audience, while all the while using the constrained framework of haiku.
rusted tools
on the wall
a plumber's day dream
Goglia’s verse has the plumber moving to new places, which is a risk, as his or her job is perceived all wrapped up in a certain approach, but there are always new ways being invented, to be taken up and explored.
Brendan Slater’s one line haiku is one example:
she called for a shot of Narcan___/\_spring morning
This could suggest the vital signs monitor in a hospital, possibly as she spikes back into life. /\ also means house in early writing, and in fact, in Chinese, a woman under a roof is one of the characters which can be used to mean 'peace' with the resulting character standing for concepts such as 'home' or 'family'. Needle precision is a watchword these writers attempt to live by in their writing.
Does Terrill challenge Bashō, (the man who raised hokku poetry to an artform) and the man many often think of as single-handedly creating the modern era of what was to become haiku?
contemplating banana leaves
I close my eyes
and see dust motes
Bashō is a pen name that the most famous of haikai verse writers was finally known by: it means plantain leaves, or banana leaves. Bashō (1644 – 1694), was born Matsuo Kinsaku, and then renamed Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa, and he elevated kado (the way of poetry) into something inclusive and meaningful to a wider number of people, regardless of social background, through his hokku verses and haibun prose. I believe Terrill embraces Bashō as the source of his creativity when composing modern haiku, and it’s as Bashō would have wished, for the student to go his own interpretative way.
absinthe to ashes
the poem's under
my fingernails
Stewart Jones gets to the nub of his poetry, and it’s through hard-living and hard-working on crafting haiku, and his edgy life experiences to draw upon, as surely as he draws on his cigarettes and drinking the artist’s drink of choice, or at times, choice of alcoholic poison. But Stewart Jones is far more than a stereotyped view of a poet, he very much has a keen grip on life, with craftsmanship turning the vehicle of the word.
None of these poets shy away from life and its consequences, they keep it real for their readers.
These poets attempt to enter the tight cage of haiku, and what Johnson talked of, back in 1751:
"Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the enclosures of regularity."
Samuel Johnson, Rambler, no. 125, 28 May 1751
Alan Summers
President, United Haiku and Tanka Society
Japan Times award-winning writer for haiku and renku
co-founder, Call of the Page
Disclaimer:
I am one of the editors, and thoroughly enjoyed working with the poets and co-editor!
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Top reviews from other countries
Alan Summers
Brilliant haiku book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2017
