Listening to the Rain: an anthology
of Christchurch haiku and haibun, edited by Cyril Childs and Joanna
Preston, The Small White Teapot Haiku Group C/-6 Ballantyne Ave, Christchurch 4,
New Zealand. 71 pages. NZ: $18.95 or US: $9.50, postage paid
Reviewed by
Marjorie Buettner
Minnesota, US
The essence of haiku resides in its power to
have each word settle into the reader’s heart and mind carried by that magic
of living breath. It is a difficult task for any poet but even more so for
writers of haiku.
However, Listening to the Rain is an
anthology which fulfills those requisites compelling the reader to enter into a
space which speaks to the reader of truths -- what Basho calls “a glimpse of
the underglimmer.” It is a glimpse which allows the reader’s intuitive
imagination to roam free, bidding us to hear, taste, see and listen well. It is
an awakening of sense-attention, then, which makes haiku successful; this
awakening deepens the world perceived.
Listening to the Rain unlocks for the reader those extra-sensory
perceptions which teach us to see the world anew, to see, as the Sufis say, with
“the eyes of the heart”:
Monday . . .
pegging the wind
into our sheets”.......(Greeba
Brydges-Jones)
This attention permits us to see the beauty in the
unexpected:
stained glass
.......light
fills
.......the collection
plate......(Jeffrey Harpeng)
What I like about this collection is the fact that
most of the haiku rely upon immediate senses; the poet addresses those senses
and stirs the reader with surprising flashes of insight which are, in reality,
gifts of awareness:
splitting pine
I smell
the whole forest......(Nicholas
Williamson)
These gifts of awareness which the poet shares
lets the reader see the interrelatedness of things, giving us powerful and
poignant images to remember:
rear-vision mirror
....my
mother
.........getting
smaller......(Nicholas Williamson)
And this:
on the beachfront --
names of battles
fading.......................(Barbara
Strang)
Some of these haiku are exquisite:
alone at night --
a tendril of honeysuckle
taps at my window...........(Joanna
Preston)
So the poet taps (just as this tendril of
honeysuckle) at our awareness, reminding us to wake up and stay awake, for time
is in flight and the world is dying.
Some of these haiku are successful, too, in
allowing the reader to enter moments of intimacy which reveal our humanity, our
humanness:
you speak of divorce
the morning sun
in your face................(
Barbara Strang)
And:
hospice visit. . .he
still beats me at chess.....(Joanna Preston)
This collection seems to urge us not to take it
for granted--this life; try to relish the world and experience it as if for the
first time:
feeling the beans
in their pod --
old woman’s fingers....(Barbara
Strang)
All in all, this is a successful collection of
haiku which inspires the reader to pay attention:
gathering eggs . . .
the warm one!....(Helen Bascand)
So, too, this collection of haiku from
Christchurch is as fresh and as warm as those gathered eggs.
Enjoy,
- Marjorie
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