Book Reviews

WHR Winter 2021/22

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LEGACY: Thirty Years of Haiku, by William Scott Galasso, Galwin Press USA, 2020, 163 p, ISBN: 978-1-7327527-2-6.
US$14.95 via Amazon.com, also availalable on every Amazon.

The author is a brilliant writer of senryu*. What about his haiku? The answer is contained in this haiku anthology, a collection of his 600 plus works composed over the last 30 years. I also know that this author is highly gifted as a writer and poet in general. So, there is no question about his literary talent and credentials.

*His book of senryu, Rough Cut: Thirty Years of Senryu, 2019 was reviewed in the Autumn 2020 issue of WHR.

If one reads good haiku (and/or senryu) anthologies, many poems jump out of the page instantly and hit the reader. All one has to do is to read them again, this time more carefully to see if they are really as good as one thought at first sight. Often, they prove to be even better. This certainly happened to me with Galasso’s senryu book. With LEGACY, it did not, on first reading. Disappointed, I decided to leave it for a considerable amount of time before picking it up again, as I could not just dismiss it, thinking the author was good at senryu but not haiku.

The predominant impression (and it was no more than an impression) then was that Galasso simply followed the rules, conventions and teachings of what might be termed as the American-led haiku trend. Within that, LEGACY may be an excellent ‘textbook’ achievement inviting universal praise, but outside it the output looked rather unimpressive.

Many months on, I have read it again. This time Galasso’s personality began to seep through the superficial layer of deceptive banality and allowed me to appreciate the deeper level of his observation, sentiments, thoughts and a distinct sense of humour. Nothing jumped out of the page but like a fossil hunt I had to take time, study the poems carefully and draw conclusions. And I was richly rewarded. Like his other books, LEGACY shows the wide-ranging interests and knowledge, which is reflected by the sheer variety of subject matter, from kitten and puppies through erotic love to death and eternity. Let us see some of the excellent haiku I have picked up (headings are of my making):

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Nature and Human Nature

scent of pine
careens through the house
clean taste of wind

branches bare
yet snow frosted apples
cling to the tree

drifting snow
names on gravestones
disappear

lasting all day
yet frost melts
in a setting sun

midday heat…
the buzz of cicadas,
splitting air

bumblebee
bending to earth
dandelion

bar-be-que
and new mown grass
summer scents

cricket be quiet,
it’s after midnight and
I need my sleep

five-year drought…
our child at the window
mesmerized by rain

windstorm over
strand by strand
the spider rebuilds

moving day
I put out the last cupful
of birdseed

They are more than mere pets

pug puppy…
wearing the worried look
of its owner

A magician of words: pun and wordplay

tramping uphill
hard rain softens
into snow

sipping black tea
on a gray afternoon
snow whitens the moor

defying old snow
shoots
of young grass

Que sais-je?

rogue wave
…curling me back
into myself

wilderness calls…
I lose the trail
to find myself

under my feet
a thousand years
of leaf fall

Love (and the loss of it) sits at the centre of his haiku joy and sorrow

bedridden wife…
all day our terrier
keeps her warm

under mistletoe –
two friends awaken
to something deeper

winter wind –
we lean into
each other

summer shower
ever so slightly
her ardor cools

snowy night
we spoon ourselves into
warmth, into sleep

Our final place

swollen creek
a bridge closed sign
someone ignored

summer’s end
passing the hearse
while I still can

life and death marry
in the mountain stream
spawning salmon

letting go
this life,
autumn leaves

A well-known Japanese haijin once remarked, “Haiku anthologies are not there to be worshipped, most especially by their authors themselves. They are there as waste bins for them to dispose of all the rubbish they have created and accumulated in order to move on.” Too sharp? Our goal should be, like that of Hokusai or Cézanne, to create at least one good haiku before we die, if at all. I mentioned in my own haiku anthology that it was a waste bin, which was not false modesty.

In his Preface to LEGACY, Galasso talks about haiku definitions and rules. Someone like him with such power of observation, original and at times detached way of looking at things, distinct and heightened sensibility and, no less importantly, a bubbling sense of humour, would be much better off if he did not worry about haiku definitions or rules beyond a slight nod of recognition. Otherwise, they could and do harm his haiku, at least limit it. Let it be free. Let it flourish to the full.

Another point shouting at us is that Galasso would benefit greatly by not bothering about or even positively getting rid of the distinction between haiku and senryu. In this supposedly haiku anthology, there are not a few poems which many would regard as senryu (and they are among the good poems). The distinction itself is not essentially important anyway. It is ‘academic’ in the worst sense, though outside the haiku circle it needs to be studied not by amateur but professional academics as part of a proper research subject. It is not for laymen or haiku practitioners to meddle with because for them it is not really necessary and would do more harm than good. Why? Because by making the distinction we would be forcing the two categories to be mutually exclusive, narrowing each other’s scope, characteristics and joy, besides yet again adding to sheer waste of time. The distinction is controversial, muddled and even spurious in the first place. So, why bother? For Galasso it would be yet another unnecessary and harmful pair of shackles removed should the distinction be thrown away. He would then be able to fly and let his sensibility take its own course in the most natural and freest way.

LEGACY is a product of the author’s ‘lifelong’ effort within the environment of the American-led haiku trend which is by definition predominant in North America but at the same time occupies a very significant proportion of haiku movements across the whole world.

However, this is only by quantity. The minority which does not belong to this trend has an important role to play: to explore and develop haiku by quality. Galasso has done a good job in the shape of this anthology, a praise-worthy achievement in the eyes of this prevailing trend. With that behind him, now is the time he should liberate himself and set off on a new journey of haiku of his own, and by so doing help expand the scope of the minority haiku poets whose efforts are invaluable but muffled like cicadas buzz extinguished by a chainsaw’s whine in his haiku. He does not need to throw this haiku anthology into the dustbin but leave it as what the title aptly calls it, a legacy.

His next anthology should not take 30 years to create. With newly augmented freedom, his free haiku only following his own grammar, prosody and poetics (i.e. instinct) will flourish and fill 163 pages in no time at all.

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The Murmur of Waves, Nina Kovacic, Croatian Cultural Association, Zagreb, published in 2020 but sales delayed due to the pandemic, ISBN
978-953-6074-27-3, (Title in Croatian: Mrmor Valova)

The prolific poetess from Croatia has produced another handsome book of haiku of originality and human warmth, selected from her published works of 2016, 2017 and 2018. The best way of reviewing it is to introduce some of the excellent works which caught my eyes (more or less in the order of my liking). It would be a good addition to the haiku corner of one’s bookcase.

cows and a funeral
trudge along their opposite ways
on a country road

farewell silence
a gentle handshake
causes pain

twilight on the quay
waves are murmuring through
fisherman’s tales

from the blossom
pollen flies away
into timelessness

refugee child
carrying his brother
instead of a toy

Pula maternity ward
a new born child and a seagull
screaming together

shopping cart
a little child sandwiched between
lettuce and onions

after dinner
I polish my reflection
in the sink

at home again
I wake up in my father’s
favourite T-shirt

alone at home
each step followed by
echo of emptiness

a snowflake
disappearing in the mist
of my breath

scent of lilac
my steps slow down
by themselves

blind friend
touches my face…
we are both smiling

the train left
an orange peel remains
on the platform

fishing eagle
between the blueness
of lake and sky

a house fly
visited my web-portal
without a password

The stars are his bones, a photo-haiku portfolio by Debiprasad Mukherjee with a garland of Upanishadic texts arranged as haiku by Gabriel Rosenstock, Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, New York, USA, cccpoetry@aol.com, hard-cover and paperback editions, 2021, ebook also available, ISBN: 978-0-89304-708-5, USD40.00

This is really a special book worthy of being added to a most special place in the library of those who lead advanced artistic, literary, intellectual and cultural life. Visually, an array of dazzling and powerful black and white photographs are displayed page after page on which you feast your eyes and at which you marvel, realising still plenty of scope is left for this media of photography to create works which shock and move people to the core. As far as the quality of these photographs is concerned their creator, Debiprasad Mukherjee of Kolkata, India, well ranks with the top photographers in history, the first name to come to mind being Henri Cartier Bresson.

Gabriel Rosenstock is one of the most original, untypical and inventive writers/thinkers/poets in the world. Within the haiku fraternity, he is unique in the eyes of this reviewer. I use the word unique not in today’s diluted/corrupted sense but in the original sense of one and another. I have yet to know someone like him in the wide world haiku community. In this book he embraces the Upanishads and the book, which defies genres, is one of those diminishing number of things which still make one feel glad to have lived even a day longer to see a new wonder to be thrilled by.

If you combine these two extraordinary individuals, something magical can be achieved. The results, the photographs and the Upanishad-inspired haiku, are simply beyond description. All I can do is to recommend it to anyone who would take it on trust. If the truth is what we aim to reach in life, we should try and elevate ourselves to the height, or depth, of atman (true Self):

the Self reveals himself
to the one
who longs for the Self

SHADED PERGOLA: Haiku & Other Short Poems With Illustrations, Eleni Traganas, Tropaeum Press, New York, 2021, 100 pages, ISBN: 978-0-578-31198-2, to be available in early 2022 through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers as well as directly from the publisher at USD14.99

The Japanese word gen-taiken means ‘the original experience’ and isnfondly used when the Japanese talk about someone else’s or their own first experience from which “it all started.” Shaded Pergola, a somewhat strange title, is the very gen-taiken for this ‘renaissance woman’ author who at 14 had her first encounter with haiku when she took refuge in the cool shade of the garden pergola from the sweltering July heat with books borrowed from the local library for her school vacation reading. One of them was a book of Japanese haiku.

As an artist myself, I was first attracted by the plant painting used for the cover of the anthology. Henri Rousseau-like, the painting, I was promptly to find, was by the author herself. So were all illustrations.

Thus it was that for those who have a penchant for botanical studies and/or flora and fauna in general, there is a delight waiting to feast their eyes as a generous amount of her elaborate pen and ink drawings is splashed throughout the book.

Quickly thumbing through and glancing at the book as a whole, everything about it looked to me remotest from haiku: ornate, elaborate, detailed, verbose (Preface), intellectual, luxurious, exuberant, stylised, Baroque & Rococo, Art Nouveau rather than Art Deco etc. What, then, are her haiku like?

Somewhat to my relief, Traganas has been wise enough to avoid what I feared might happen: cheap and thoughtless conversion to the doctrines of the prevailing haiku trend, with the result of losing her precious originality, sensibility and positive contribution to the development of modern haiku. At the same time, I was apprehensive about the possibility of the opposite happening: her oeuvre becoming so outlandishly un-haiku-like as to be called haiku at all. This would include her violating the rules of the aforementioned haiku trend, which she often does.

Moxie

Abandoned in the
garden, a solitary
rose defies the weeds

This is probably the most haiku-like poem in the book, though some conventional haiku rules are ignored: having the title, capital letter and anthropomorphism (all of which the present reviewer approves of). Moxie suggests courage, energy and determination, and certainly helps usnto understand in what way the author is viewing the solitary rose. Neglecting gardening myself and living among stinging nettles and milliards of other weeds, I do have not one but many roses struggling to survive, producing from time to time smaller but exquisite flowers! I only hope the author is not comparing herself to this rose.

Christmas Rose

Blooming in a cold
and shaded mound: Look!
Hope in the dead of winter

One of the least haiku-like poems in the book, I nevertheless wish tontake this up here because ‘Hope’ happens to be the theme of haiku submission in this issue. Winter flowers are all welcome as people are put in long situations of cold and misery. They have special beauty too because of the scarcity. Humans are quite adept at finding a silver lining in every cloud, which may explain in part our resilience for survival. Christmas rose is a much better name than hellebore because of its association with happy and merry festive time and the flower symbol of wellbeing.

Haiku is not the only thing Traganas does. She is also a novelist, poet,nartist, a concert pianist and composer. Multi-talented, she defiesndefinition as she is different things to different people. For me, she is all about beauty with all its deep implications. A little bit likenMishima Yukio, she displays gorgeous manifestations of beaty, sometimesntinged with macabre realities of life which is the other side of the coin: mystery, vermin, death, void, futility, loss of hope, misery, transitory and evanescent world, limit of human understanding, etc.

There was once a fashionable school of thought in modern Japanese literary movement. It was called tanbi-ha, meaning ‘indulge in beauty’ school, and Traganas is exactly that.

Changing Guard

Scratchy nib of my
empty fountain pen – the world
is slipping away

Lifeline

Chafed hands in tweed woolen
coat pockets reach for the
last crumbs of shortbread

Demise

Crumbling pergola
now rotting wood not even
fit for a pencil

Closure

Spindly knotted weeds
tumble sparsely in the wind –
scattered autumn hopes

So, what are these poems assembled in Shaded Pergola? The act of trying to define haiku is in its final analysis futile, or wanting at best. By definition, it can limit the scope and possibility of haiku to the detriment of the author, and by extension of the haiku literature at large. I have long decided to accept all poems presented to me as haiku by the author, to be haiku, if he/she says so. The rest is to judge whether or not it is good, if so, how good. That is all.

There are good haiku and bad haiku in this book quite apart from one’s likes and dislikes, as is the case in any haiku anthology. That, in fact, is not really the point. The greatest contribution Traganas has made is to bring a breath of fresh air into a closely knit haiku clique imprisoned by the rules, regulations and conventions of their own making. And it is not as if a novice is voicing her ignorance because, if first encountered haiku at 14, she now has spent many, many seasons to be a fully-fledged ‘seasoned’ haijin.

For example, considering Zen-infested haiku world, especially that in North America, Traganas in the middle of New York appears unaffected negatively by the Zen OCD. The following haiku which seems to be the only one in the book with direct reference to Zen can be said to be surpassing Zen rather than being a slave to it:

Perspective

The here and the now:
to a flower, there is
nothing else that matters