December sunset
putting aside her journal
to peel an orange
This title haiku is representative of much the work found throughout Peggy Heinrich's collection: a vivid image expressed simply, some personal reflection, a small moment that gathers significance the longer one sits with it.
Organized seasonally with black and white photographs by John Bolivar marking the passage of time, it gives us a year in haiku. And like most years, it is not without its challenges.
sleepless at night...
some of the sheep
won't jump the fence
Dead-of-night anxieties are captured vividly in the recalcitrant sheep; this glancing suggestion of something greater below the surface typifies what makes this and other Heinrich haiku so effective.
For example, look at how green conveys multiple meanings in this haiku:
in the hammock
forgetting he-said-she-said
so many shades of green
The pettiness of fingerpointing fades in the face of so much new life; at the same time, "shades of green" also suggest shadows and envy.
Published in 2009 by The MET Press, Peeling an Orange is the work of a very gifted poet.
These are not poems that trumpet their brilliance. They are small jewels that reflect moments in time with seeming effortlessness and quiet grace. This is a collection that rewards re-reading.
Showing posts with label Japanese poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japanese poetry. Show all posts
Friday, April 9, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Stream Singing Your Name, Jean LeBlanc (poetry/tanka and sijo)
Every once in awhile, I come across a book I do not want to end, that engages on many levels and invites me to re-read, to linger a bit longer. Jean LeBlanc's The Stream Singing Your Name is just such a book.
I was unfamiliar with LeBlanc's work before discovering it at the Modern English Tanka Press, but I was intrigued when I realized it contained both tanka and sijo. Sijo — pronounced shee-jo — is a classical Korean form consisting of three lines, traditionally 14-15 syllables each. LeBlanc intermingles the two forms, sometimes alternating, sometimes offering a sequence of sijo or a series of tanka, and creates a tapestry that brings out the best in each.
I find myself returning especially to her sijo. With its languid long lines, they are a beautiful foil to the emotional immediacy of the shorter-lined tanka. I have so many favorites in this collection. But on this day, I was struck by this lyrical and life-affirming sijo:
When I die, do what you have to do to make me, not of this earth,
but of these rocks, this limestone ridge. I want to feed the lichens,
anchor ferns firmly in these clefts, become my mineral self.
Whether she is writing about her students who don't distinguish between funereal and funeral, the dandelions she gives free rein every spring, her father's shoulders made strong from chopping wood or her garden in October with its
redbud leaves
and other crinkled hearts
beneath my feet
Jean LeBlanc reveals a deep regard for the world. Throughout the collection, the flow seems effortless, taking the reader from one to the next, until you arrive at the stream of the title in the final double sijo, and:
You wonder if you could just stand here, forever,
the stream singing your name around you.
I was unfamiliar with LeBlanc's work before discovering it at the Modern English Tanka Press, but I was intrigued when I realized it contained both tanka and sijo. Sijo — pronounced shee-jo — is a classical Korean form consisting of three lines, traditionally 14-15 syllables each. LeBlanc intermingles the two forms, sometimes alternating, sometimes offering a sequence of sijo or a series of tanka, and creates a tapestry that brings out the best in each.
I find myself returning especially to her sijo. With its languid long lines, they are a beautiful foil to the emotional immediacy of the shorter-lined tanka. I have so many favorites in this collection. But on this day, I was struck by this lyrical and life-affirming sijo:
When I die, do what you have to do to make me, not of this earth,
but of these rocks, this limestone ridge. I want to feed the lichens,
anchor ferns firmly in these clefts, become my mineral self.
Whether she is writing about her students who don't distinguish between funereal and funeral, the dandelions she gives free rein every spring, her father's shoulders made strong from chopping wood or her garden in October with its
redbud leaves
and other crinkled hearts
beneath my feet
Jean LeBlanc reveals a deep regard for the world. Throughout the collection, the flow seems effortless, taking the reader from one to the next, until you arrive at the stream of the title in the final double sijo, and:
You wonder if you could just stand here, forever,
the stream singing your name around you.
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Unworn Necklace, Roberta Beary (poetry/haiku)
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.
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.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Heavenly Maiden Tanka, Akiko Baba (poetry/tanka)
older now
than my mother when she died
I put my hair up!
as if this morning I am leaving
alone for a strange country
haha no yowai
harukani koete
yuu kami ya
ryuuri ni mukau
asa no gotoki ka
Akiko Baba's work is simultaneously reflective and daring, personal and universal. This tanka is a good example: it is a coming of age poem, capturing that moment in a woman's life when she realizes she is in uncharted territory. She will have to find her own way.
For more than half a century, Akiko Baba wrote tanka, the traditional Japanese form comprised of 31 syllables divided into lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. Baba's work is well-known and highly regarded in Japan, but little known in the U.S. Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold, her translators and fellow tanka poets, have done us a great service by sharing 100 of her poems selected from 16 collections. I was especially pleased that they included the original Japanese, both in Romaji (shown in this post) and the original Kanji/kana.
The Romaji allows non-Japanese readers to appreciate the lyricism of the originals, and through her imagery, Baba lets the natural world speak to human concerns. She sounds many themes in these tanka: loss, loneliness, fierce independence, understanding that the universe is much bigger than we know.
coming from afar
from another galaxy
some souls
are faintly white
dogwood flowers
ginkan no
kanata yori kishi
tamashii no
honokani shiroki
yamabooshi no hana
Emily Dickinson wrote that the test of a good poem is whether it takes the top of your head off. Baba's tanka can generate that kind of visceral response. This one takes my breath away.
like snow
like leaves of a tree
as light as
the click click of collecting
the bones of my mother
yuki no yooni
konoha no yooni
awakereba
sakuri sakuri to
haha wo sukueri
In Japan cremation is customary. But fire is not absolute, as Baba reminds us. She shows us ashes in the snow, the leaves, both images of regeneration. And with the click click sound of chopsticks, we understand it is for the survivors to retrieve what remains, to honor and remember. It is an extraordinary tanka.
than my mother when she died
I put my hair up!
as if this morning I am leaving
alone for a strange country
haha no yowai
harukani koete
yuu kami ya
ryuuri ni mukau
asa no gotoki ka
Akiko Baba's work is simultaneously reflective and daring, personal and universal. This tanka is a good example: it is a coming of age poem, capturing that moment in a woman's life when she realizes she is in uncharted territory. She will have to find her own way.
For more than half a century, Akiko Baba wrote tanka, the traditional Japanese form comprised of 31 syllables divided into lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. Baba's work is well-known and highly regarded in Japan, but little known in the U.S. Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold, her translators and fellow tanka poets, have done us a great service by sharing 100 of her poems selected from 16 collections. I was especially pleased that they included the original Japanese, both in Romaji (shown in this post) and the original Kanji/kana.
The Romaji allows non-Japanese readers to appreciate the lyricism of the originals, and through her imagery, Baba lets the natural world speak to human concerns. She sounds many themes in these tanka: loss, loneliness, fierce independence, understanding that the universe is much bigger than we know.
coming from afar
from another galaxy
some souls
are faintly white
dogwood flowers
ginkan no
kanata yori kishi
tamashii no
honokani shiroki
yamabooshi no hana
Emily Dickinson wrote that the test of a good poem is whether it takes the top of your head off. Baba's tanka can generate that kind of visceral response. This one takes my breath away.
like snow
like leaves of a tree
as light as
the click click of collecting
the bones of my mother
yuki no yooni
konoha no yooni
awakereba
sakuri sakuri to
haha wo sukueri
In Japan cremation is customary. But fire is not absolute, as Baba reminds us. She shows us ashes in the snow, the leaves, both images of regeneration. And with the click click sound of chopsticks, we understand it is for the survivors to retrieve what remains, to honor and remember. It is an extraordinary tanka.
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