hating him
between bites
of unripe plums
Roberta Beary's haiku often give the reader a sensory double-shot. When I read the above haiku, for example, I feel the hardness of the immature heart-shaped fruit even as my mouth puckers with the bitterness of plum and love gone sour.
For five years in the 90s, Beary lived in Tokyo, where she began her study of haiku. It was time well-spent. Although The Unworn Necklace is her first collection, many of the haiku within are award-winners.
As one whose cats heighten my own awareness of the natural world, I immediately identified with this, which won Honorable Mention in the National League of American Pen Women's International Haiku Contest 1997:
not hearing it
till the cat stirs
birdsong
And I was struck by the emotional subtlety and suggestion of something greater than we can know in this haiku, which was awarded Grand Prize in the Kusamakura International Haiku Competition in 2006:
thunder
the roses shift
into shadow
And this:
funeral home
here too
she straightens his tie
That bittersweet acknowledgement is what I respond to in so many of Beary's haiku. This is haiku that echoes in the mind and heart long after the book has been put away.
