John
S. OConnors Room Full of Chairs is an
attractive collection of effective, in many cases quite
engaging, haiku. The book is elegantly designed by Charles
Trumbull of Deep North Press, and many of the haiku are
graced with reproductions of linoleum-block prints created
by students at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools,
where OConnor teaches. Students of Annie Cattersons,
a colleague of OConnors, were each given a haiku
to illustrate. The result is a collaborative work worthy
of a good haiku poet whose classroom is undoubtedly full
of more than just chairs.
The best of the haiku have a sharp precision, like a scalpel
cutting out memorable observations, often with a slight
twist away from the expected. For example,
ghost
stories
the campfire darkens
the forest
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Here
we expect the campfire to lighten the surroundings, but
through contrast it serves instead to magnify the nearby
darkness.
Instead of sight, we are left with only hearing to recognize
a dog in an alley:
stray
bark
running scared
down the alley
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The
sound of the bark is sufficient, though, to convey the animals
fright, and the sightlessness grows on the reader, reflecting
realistically the experience of gazing into a dark and receding
alley.
What
a finely tuned sensibility becomes aware of the tiny image,
smallness befitting smallness:
shadow
of a price tag
on the bonsai
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OConnor
also displays a winning sense of humor with some self-deprecation:
last
page
of The Brothers Karamazov
a gray hair
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And
with a subtle play on words:
coming
home
from the shrink . . .
lunar eclipse
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Room
Full of Chairs is John OConnors first book
of haiku; readers should enjoy this one and look forward
to more.
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