Book Reviews

March 2013

Book Reviews

Significance of the Insignificant

by Linda L. Ashok

Literary talent is not so easy to define as it might first appear. However, I know it when I see it. Linda Ashok is one such. Reading her haiku makes one realise how utterly pointless, at the end of the day, to try to define haiku. Haiku is haiku if the author calls it so. What remains as the only meaningful question is whether it is good or not, whether it moves one or not and whether or not it does things which any good poems do. Failure to understand this point has led to the stunted growth and poor development of world haiku since the end of World War II.

Ashok’s Significance of the Insignificant, a collection of her short verses, has in it many praises by other commentators (almost too many for a book), which are themselves very well-written and worthy of some appreciation. Therefore, I shall not add any of my own praise for her achievement. The anthology can be read as an e-book and it does make a good read. In addition to haiku she presents tanka, senryu and monostich.

Doppo Kunikida, a famous Japanese author, wrote a short story entitled Hibon naru Bonjin (An Extraordinary Ordinary Man). It is an insight into something which is extraordinary in a man who is like anybody else and most ordinary. One also knows that a feeble and coward man can sometimes turn out to be brave in war. The title of the book is also in line with this kind of observation. Her poems depict that which may be insignificant for others or compared with more serious matters but which to her is significant. The poems are also records in the verse form of what is seemingly insignificant but closer or keener observation would prove otherwise. This is in fact the essence of haiku itself. One of the most important teachings of Basho is kogo kizoku. Literally it means: be enlightened high but come back to the popular. More specifically, kogo dictates that a poet’s perception, sensibility, taste, standards, understanding and the like should be of a high level but kizoku dictates that he/she should belong to ordinary people with ordinary words and things. This is one of his famous paradoxes, a dynamic feature of his poetics and an example of his seemingly contradictory assertions. So, Ashok is doing well if her poems have achieved what the title of her book points to. In order to get an answer to it, I shall list a few love poems which I think have come out outstandingly well.

at the break of dawn

you part my lips

asking for blossoms

drifting downstream

my fingers wet with moonbeam

his throat gulps in air

your fingertips

do they remember

our monsoon night?

One season-word haiku:

words

fall without noise

autumn

Significance of the Insignificant

ISBN 978-81-8253-356-1

First Edition: 2012, Second Edition: 2013

Rs. 250/-

Cyberwit.net

HIG 45 KaushambiKunj, Kalindipuram

Allahabad -211011 (U.P.) India

http://www.cyberwit.net

Tel: +(91) 9415091004 +(91) (532) 2552257

E-mail: info@cyberwit.net

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the express written consent of Linda L Ashok.

Printed at Repro India Limited.

The Cockermouth Poets 1700-2012

The anthology we’ve all been waiting for! Cockermouth has played unexpected host to the selected eighty-five poets whose poems fill this collection, edited by Michael Baron and Joan Hetherington. It has been beautifully designed byKaren Sawrey of Carlisle, and further enhanced by two original illustrations (left) from Cumbrian artist Derek Eland.

You’ll also find and an anonymous sketch of Wordsworth House – William’s birthplace – as it was in August 1850, but at the core of this unashamedly eclectic volume are the poems that were displayed in the town’s shop windows in November 2010, in a poetry trail to mark the first anniversary of the great flood.

Some poems were specially written, and others found and offered for that event. Whilst watery themes predominate, the poems range from the classical offering of Thomas Tickell, son of Bridekirk’s 1684 vicar, to the frankly political of the Malawian poet, Jack Mapanje. Included in the long march of centuries are three Poets Laureate, a Nobel prize winner, several professors and poetry prize winners, two clergymen, an apprentice sign painter enthusiastic about hunting, schoolchildren, and townsfolk who were here that fateful November night of 2009.

As a son of Cockermouth, Wordsworth gets his proper moment, as does Shelley, stopping at the Globe Inn as horses were changed for the post-coach to Whitehaven; and R.L. Stevenson, who stayed a night at the same hostelry. Then there is Isaac Wilkinson, a school chum of Fletcher Christian, and Gwordie Greenup and his once very well known ‘Ah Yance Went to Lorton’. Throw in practically every living Cumbrian poet and visitors from Scotland, Wales and Ireland and further off – Australia, Poland, South Africa, Japan and Hungary – and you have an extraordinary choice of reading.

The Dowager Lady Egremont, from her ancient castle which has seen the poets come and go, writes the foreword. This two year project has been funded by many generous organisations and individuals – Cockermouth Neighbourhood Forum, The Leconfield Estate, Allerdale Borough Council, Cockermouth Soroptomists International, The Cumbrian Newspapers Group, Riversmeet Community Cooperative, Firns Home Hardware, Mrs Brenda Wood, and many anonymous donors. The net proceeds of the book will be shared between Cockermouth Mountain Rescue and Save The Children.

The Cockermouth Poets 1700-2012 is priced £8.50, available from bookshops. (Published by Octogenary Press, ISBN 978-0-9565134-1-0.)

The Flowers Of The Wind

By Ecaterina Neagoe

The Flowers Of The Wind by Ecaterina Neagoe, illustration by Ion Codrescu, published by Ex Ponto, Constanza, Romania, 2012, ISBN: 978-606-598-200-0

Is “the wind of the flowers” different from “the flowers of the wind”? The answer depends significantly on one’s sensibility and/or on the exact circumstances in which one experiences the scene. Let us see her own poems:

Shrouding

my breast without hills –

the wind of the flowers

This haiku, dedicated to the poetess Saito Fumi, is about the wind but indirectly it is also about the flowers. However, the two are delicately and aesthetically interchangeable.

The rustling pressed

in the yellowed book –

the flower of the wind

Another haiku puts the key words the other way round. The two arrangements are similar and yet different. The similarity and difference are both subtle and multi-layered. Thus, flowers and wind appear frequently in Neagoe’s haiku. In her handwriting, the author wrote to me the following:

A flower

does not let everything

dissipate in the wind

This is a haiku more difficult to interpret, though the surface meaning is clear enough.

Things get dry and burnt in the wind. In such a desolate landscape a single flower would be a saving grace. However, the author may mean something different. One thing is clear here. This haiku is not like conventional haiku and that’s where its excellence lies. Non-Japanese haiku convention would dismiss it outright as being a “sentence haiku” apart from anything else.

From these three examples one can deduce that both flower(s) and wind are important in the author’s perception of life and nature like the Greek classical elements or those in Babylonia or India.

Ion Codrescu has done the illustrations all through the book with his Japan-acquired calligraphy and calligraphic drawings, including a lot of kanji characters relating to specific poems. These illustrations are themselves a delight to see. As a professional Japanese calligrapher myself, I am much impressed by the progress Ion has made in this rather difficult art. All I have to say is “Keep trying”.