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HAIKU CARDS -- A Poetic Game for All Ages, Visnja McMaster, Zagreb, Croatia

reviewed by

Susumu Takiguchi
Oxford, England

Strictly speaking, this is not a book review, for what is dealt with, is a box of poetic cards packed in a beautifully produced box. However, these cards, numbering two hundred, are printed with haiku poems, and therefore can be regarded as an anthology, albeit in an unorthodox form.

Moreover, the cards have a strangely familiar shape, thickness and weight -- familiar, that is, to the Japanese. This is because they resemble something called hyakunin-isshu ("one hundred verses of one hundred poets"), an old Japanese game based on the ancient anthology of the same name, much like the "Pelmanism", "Concentration" or "Snap of trump" cards. Hyakunin-isshu is still played in Japan as a New Year's game.

There are a number of different versions of hyakunin-isshu, but the Ogura Hyakunin-isshu, which is said to have been compiled by Fujiwara no Teika in the 13th century, is the most well-known and definitive. Hyakunin-isshu is played, as Anthony Thwaite in his introduction to The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse explains, with someone reading kami no ku (the first part) of a waka from the anthology, then:

"in this Oriental version of Snap, from the hundred cards containing the shimo no ku (second halves) of the poems spread on the floor or on the table, the players choose the appropriate one."

Deft players can remember the placement of those cards with matching second halves, and pick them up within a split second after the first half of a poem starts to be read out.

Visnja McMaster's HAIKU CARDS game is played basically in the same way. Someone reads the first line of a haiku and the players will locate a card with a haiku of the same first line. For instance, if the first line, "Approaching the pit," is read out, the following haiku must be chosen to win the pick:

Approaching the pit,
the miner cuddles to him
his lamp

Marinko Kovacevic

As is indicated by this author's name, the haiku poems printed on these HAIKU CARDS appear to be mainly by poets of Croatia, although one finds some English names as well. McMaster has long been disseminating haiku among school children in various innovative ways, of which the HAIKU CARDS game is at once the most ingenious and joyful. The lid of the HAIKU CARDS box bears a delightful colour photograph of five young Croatian girls in old national costume playing this game with McMaster. One notices, in the photograph, an unexpected object -- a hagoita, the wooden racket used by Japanese girls in games of shuttlecock during the New Year's celebrations.

Seen as a form of anthology, another unexpected delight is found in these HAIKU CARDS: one can enjoy just that -- namely, a "pure" anthology in the sense that there is no introduction to be read, no publisher’s quotes of praises, no index to consult, no biographical accounts of authors, no annotations, notes or critical and learned essays to distract concentration from the poems. Above all, there are no "famous" names among the authors. One may indulge in the pure pleasure of reading one haiku poem after another without any such distractions.

I will not be able to tell whether or not HAIKU CARDS is good as a game until I have tried to play it myself; I should assume so. However, we can argue that point in a review of games and not of books. Here, let me invite you to read some of these cards with me:

 

A man alone on a cliff,
The sea froths in the silence
of his gaze.

Slavica Cilas

---

A girl’s running.
Her rucksack can hardly
catch up with her.

Zvonimir Balog

---

Red juice of black cherry
is filling the cracks
in the old woman’s hands.

Domagoj Susac

---

Poplars cut down;
How am I now
to find my house?

Goran Milenic

---

It swallows a fish
the seagull of evil eyes
white and innocent.

Maja Rijavec

---

A wet raven
on a sign-post to nowhere
One more autumn.

Nediljko Boban

---

The evening calm
only the plants in the garden
are breathing.

Smiljaka Bilankov

---

An old man and his shadow
with a stick to support them
tread slowly

Zivko Prodanovic

---

A boy;
He’s hiding winter
in his pockets.

Alojz Jembrih

---

A new chapel
built of sighs
and of hard stone.

Hasan Dzinic-Dzino

---

She wipes all with a cloth,
only her mother’s picture
with her bare hands.

Branislava Krzelj

---

Butterfly
scattering silence
with its wings.

Zvonko Petrovic

---

Visnja McMaster:
http://www.epiphanous.org/wha/si/v.mcmaster.shtml

 

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