These
two volumes are the first books to appear from the Natal-Light
Press, a publishing house set up by An’ya to publish
her own work. Her irrepressible enthusiasm for haiku is
abundant throughout: at the risk of being a grump, I’d
say “overabundant,” for these are an unusual
phenomenon, overproduced haiku books. One example of how
the publisher’s exuberance outpaces the author’s
craft is found in a passage from a page of promotional copy
detailing the handmade character of Natal-Press books, which,
we’re told, unlike other publishers avoid “dye-cut
pages and machine-sown bindings.” These overwide books
are printed in multicolored inks on heavy stock and bound
Japanese-style with coated twine. Even more, however, the
binding holes are reinforced with brass grommets, and the
excess binding twine is plaited and finished with what looks
like a handmade ceramic bead to make a page marker. Clear
plastic sheets overlay the covers and are inserted as flyleaves.
The huge body type in Haiku Wine is explained in
a dedication: “This large print book is for all our
honoured senior citizens in New Zealand and the USA,”
but one has to wonder how arthritic hands might cope with
the very stiff pages, unforgiving bindings, and need to
rotate the book back and forth from portrait- to landscape-style
pages to read the haiku—not to mention that damned
bead that just gets in the way of everything.
OK,
all crotchetiness aside, what about the haiku? In general,
the contents of Moonless Light, An’ya’s
collection, is of high quality, and it is nice to have a
collection of her work, much of which has shown well in
international haiku contests. An’ya’s verse
is distinguished by her use of fresh images, many derived
from her interesting life (she is, for example, a falconer)
and rural Oregon residence. In a blurb on the back cover,
Michael McClintock likens An’ya to Christina Rossetti
in terms of “artistic philosophy, passion, energy,
and joyful image-making.” These two haiku seem representative
of the collection (the second won first place in the 2000
Hackett Contest):
blood
moon
cuckoo’s voice in the back
of his throat
after
its first flight
the young gerfalcon’s talons
tighter on my glove
The
idea of a book compiled jointly by two geographically distant,
internationally known, prize-winning poets such as Ernest
J. Berry and An’ya is very fetching, but this volume,
Haiku Wine, doesn’t quite achieve what it might
have. The main problem is that Berry’s verse (in baby-blue
ink) is always presented first, followed on the facing page,
in pink ink, by An’ya’s, such that it looks
like (it may not actually have happened this way, of course)
Ernie always had the first word and An’ya was always
in the position of having to think up a worthy response.
This approach also emphasizes the difference in quality
between the two poets’ haiku. Two pairs, with Berry
on the left, may illustrate the problem:
night
fishing
knee-deep
in the pleiades
breast-high
in a private pond
white lilies
cold snap
the panhandler closes
his hand
cold
snap
the dandelion leaves
flatten out
In
No Other Business Here, their 1999 book that features
a similar poetical conversation, John Brandi and Steve Sanfield
do not indicate who wrote which poem, which helps level
and unify the whole collection. Nonetheless, there is much
poetry of interest in both Haiku Wine and Moonless
Night. They’re worth a look.
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