WHR August 2020

Book Reviews

The Walk Home by Susan Lee Kerr

haiku senryu tanka, published by Alba Publishing, UK, 2020, ISBN: 978-1-912773-34-3, £12 UK/$15 US

Befitting someone who teaches creative writing, Susan Lee Kerr gives a somewhat unusual introduction to her new book. Hers may be interpreted as a long journey through numerous literary and artistic paths in search of a holy but elusive grail, in her words ‘Where do haiku come from?’

After all is said and done, the holy grail she is after is probably haiku spirit, or the essence of haiku. This is by far the most elusive of all the attributes of haiku. So much so that even the most erudite and seasoned haiku commentators fail more often than not to catch it. In fact, the more knowledgeable and experienced one is, the less likely it is for one to find it. This is often because one is barking up the wrong tree. Tons of ink has been spent and saliva spattered to explain the minutiae around haiku spirit but people seldom if ever got there. Susan Lee Kerr seems to have wandered into that special place from time to time.

click of the gate

and my daughter’s heels –

two a.m.

in the small hours

between my husband’s snores

thunder growls

full moon

we walk the night meadow

white grass either side

flower stall

I linger so long

he’ll make me pay

in the cemetery

green air of cut grass

I breathe deep

miles inland

gull cries carry the sea

to me

awaiting the light

closed red lips

of tulips

old bridge

its railings held together

with spiderwebs

homeward bound

a sharp half moon

veiling, unveiling

jazzman

between putting brass to lips

swigs a beer

winter wind

tree top branches scratch

the bright blue sky

not yet ready

to give yourself to me

plump brambleberry

Summer Haiku by Owen Bullock

published by Recent Work Press, Canberra, Australia, 2019, ISBN:9780648404279 (paperback), 60 pages, AUD$8.95,

https://recentworkpress.com/product/summer-haiku/

Owen Bullock has developed a distinct haiku style of gentle observation with a touch of humour and wryness. This time, in this chapbook, he depicts what he saw while camping three summers in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Reading them, one gets transported to an idyllic way of spending days in the summer in this beautiful country.

summer heat

the snap and crack

of broom seeds

fifth night camping

we find

the pillows

yellow butterfly

from piece of air

to piece of air

farm tour

a llama cleans its teeth

on the fence wire

eel bite

blood seeps out

the teeth marks

the river drops…

I want to be impassive

as this stone

De-a-ndoaselea/Backwards by Vasile Moldovan

Senryu, Bucuresti: Editura U.Z.P. Romania, 2020, ISBN: 978-606-9654-25-5, contact@uzp.org.ro

Erroneous polemics on senryu seem to know no bounds. In his first book of this genre Vasile Moldovan ventures into it making no apology for doing so. Which is a right approach because argy-bargies on the nature and function of senryu (e.g. its definition, differences between it and haiku, its necessary conditions) are, after all is said and done, largely just as futile, boring and being a waste of time as those of haiku. They are necessary, I accept, up to a point but after that the debates become counterproductive. If the author says it is senryu, then it is senryu. Whatever a poem may be, all that matters is that it should be good. We need no discussion on bad poems under any beautiful name. This is a good book but it would have benefitted enormously from proofreading and tweak by a native speaker of English. As it is, the English versions are not worth printing. The illustrations are really excellent, though. Perhaps the best thing of this book is its title of which I, try as I might, fail to make head nor tail, while the author is laughing.

Sleeping guard –

in his place watches

a wolf dog

A Homeric laugh

but under the clown’s mask

two streaks of tears

Empty pockets –

however, a penny of silver

the moon in the sky

Evening promenade –

the full moon illuminating

his boldness

Even under the mask

you are so beautiful…

in my memory

Grandma is up to date

with the latest fashion…

from the last century

After a quarrel

the wind dries up

a crocodile tear

On the clothes line

a wedding dress

among the nappies

Ignoring the scarecrow

the starlings enjoy themselves

of the new harvest

Only the people

swear at each other…

the dogs just bark

Rough Cut: Thirty Years of Senryu by William Scott Galasso

Galwin Press, 2019, 137 pgs, US$12.95 via Amazon, ISBN: 978-1-7327527-1-9, galwinpress@yahoo.com

Another book of senryu to review in this issue of World Haiku Review. A little test to see how far someone has come in the quest of true senryu is to ask if he/she knows ugachi, if so, whether he/she understands it, and if so, whether he/she can explain it cogently and make people understand.

I used to preside over an online forum called WHCsenryu whose purpose it was to write true senryu through rigorous study and lively exchange of views and opinions. It raised the general level of understanding senryu and the quality of the actual works. But some specific points proved difficult to comprehend. Among them, ugachi was the one thing of which nobody came anywhere near the slightest grasp. After gargantuan efforts to explain it in every possible way, I finally gave up. Let us see if William Scott Galasso has penetrated it.

Humour and light-heartedness were an important attribute of haikai-no-renga as opposed to the more serious waka and renga genres, as the name haikai (comic) implies. The most important opening stanza, or hokku, carried this attribute, which was then ‘bequeathed’ to its offspring, haiku. Basho’s influence to elevate haikai-no-renga into a more serious form of literature meant that the same attribute became something more subtle, nuanced or even hidden. But Basho in his turn came to contemplate a new concept, karumi or lightness, in his last years, which included a sense of humour.

Even after senryu came into being, hokku and haiku retained humour. It is therefore gross over-simplification and harmful to say senryu is all about humour and haiku is serious. When people talk about senryu they are really talking about a specific sub-division of senryu called jiji-senryu, or current-topic-senryu, which is full of humour, satire, irony, cynicism, banter, witticism etc. The current artificial dichotomy between haiku and senryu is a product of wide-spread pigeonholing by the analysis-crazy, definition-mad and classification-orientated zealots. They have done more harm than good. Senryu was in fact despised and largely dismissed in the West to the same and corresponding extent to which haiku was worshiped and put on a pedestal like an idol or new religion. It was common that people were criticising someone else’s haiku, saying, ‘That’s not haiku. It’s senryu.’ Some even made a serious proposition that senryu should be abolished or banned.

These are all futile, unnecessary and time- and energy-consuming nonsense. The sooner they are stopped the better. If an author calls his/her work senryu, it is senryu. The only meaningful question is whether or not that work is good. The world abounds with appalling works under the beautiful name of haiku, senryu or anything else.

William Scott Galasso’s book is full of good poems. They are good whatever you may wish to call them. If pressed, I would probably call them something like ‘Humanity Senryu’. At any rate, it is extremely welcome that a proper book, well-structured and attractively edited, devoted to senryu should appear after a long and shameful neglect. It is mostly about himself, his loved ones and the ones he has come into contact with, but what is presented is effectively also a story about us humans as a whole. It is an undated chronicle of joy and sorrow, isolation and togetherness, life and death, love and estrangement, meeting and parting, pleasure of sex and its bitterness, sweet and sour relationships in the family etc. all played out in a drama called life (well, at least 30 years of it in his case). These are depicted with carefully chosen words and brutal honesty.

Hard facts of life are presented as if it were in the case of autopsy. The impression is that there are more parting than meeting, more sorrow than joy, more disagreement than harmony and more irony than straightforward happening, but that’s life. It may be so because William Scott Galasso is lucky enough to have lived so long. In the face of bitterness, cruel fate and suffering he has kept one of his assets, his smile. He is almost like a sage in the medieval Japan.

Reading through, one cannot help liking him as a newly-acquired friend. It may be because one is moved by his humanity, compassion and honesty. The cover of the book is his portrait painted by his artist wife Vicki, namely someone who knows him through and through and who has the professional skills and capability to put that knowledge on the canvas. The man who is looking straight at us seems to me to be a big and strong man even in the autumn of the year but his eyes betray a complex personality, somewhat troubled and vulnerable. Maybe he is just making a grimace because of the strong sun. It is difficult for me to show some samples of good senryu in the book because there are so many of them. Here’s my try:

long ago

the last time I saw you…

and far away

quite the duet

snoring puppy,

snoring wife

DNA test

the past we never

talked about

goodbye hug,

through my father’s jacket

skin and bones

cursing me

with his last words,

my father

death certificate

before the ink dries

squabbles

I’ll miss the lark song

in the morning, she said…

then closed her eyes

full mailbox…

the birthday wishes

she’ll never receive

one-year widow

she sleeps in his shirt

for the last time

the time it takes

to undo buttons

lovers in stitches

her orgasm

shivers me

into mine

moment of release –

four taut legs and

twenty toes curling

offkey

the warbler’s song

…divorce papers

the door closes…

something permanent

in the click of its bolt

horseshoe crab…

on another sixth of June

helmets in the sand

Christmas Eve…

in her bed, in his foxhole

dreaming each other

tattered shawl

yet she bends to feed

the feral cat

in mid-sentence

her eyes leave mine,

old flame

long lost brother calls…

our brief conversation

still all about him

whispers…

when I turn the light on,

nobody there

Father’s Day –

again, he refuses

to take my call

to remove

or not to remove…

the feeding tube

moments away

from father’s dying breath

…forgiveness

not forgetting

to forgive myself

…and you

Goodbye

the hardest word to say

sometimes

a frozen smile

on parted lips

a wooden embrace

the artist’s painting

of her husband, now I know

what she sees in me

numbers on his arm

a grandchild asks

how he got them

synagogue walls

citizens extract

a swastika

father and son –

laughing as the snow

turns yellow

silent prayer

it all comes down to

a single word

gathered years

frosting my beard

but not my smile

one breath

the difference between

I am and I was