The
124 poems in this collection have been culled from several
hundred of Winkes haiku written over the past quarter-century
in a selection process that involved the poet and Deep North
Press editor, Charles Trumbull. Their efforts appear to
have been painstaking and the results are good. These are
not Japanese haiku clothed in costume English but American
haiku written in the American idiom.
Reading
through these poems is not unlike walking through a gallery
of paintings by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and others of
the Ashcan school; I think particularly of Hoppers
Nighthawks, House by the Railroad,
Model Reading, and Room in Brooklyn
when I encounter these visions of inescapable loneliness
of persons and things within the American environment:
louvered
light . . .
a lone office worker
sips the last coffee |
March
evening walk
house after house
the cold blue flicker |
winter
night
the white frost glow
of a near-empty bus |
jutted
chin
the sax-man
bites a long wail |
Poems
such as theseand this collection is full of themreflect
and are part of that body of American haiku that is liberated
not only from inappropriate Japanese constraints of form
and language, but also subject and imagery. It is not a
severance from that tradition but a fresh, clear flowing
river moving outward from it and cutting its own channel,
gliding along its own bed. The connection to the Japanese
predecessor is most evident in Winkes poems of natural
imagery, such as these two:
moon.
another moth
at the screen |
casting
shadows
where the sun cannot light
row of pines |
Fine
poems, universal, and belonging to no cultural identity.
But Winkes real accomplishment is in poems like these
in
cold shadows
behind the station
leaves circling |
steam
from his heavy glove
winter café |
This
is a midwestern-US fall, not one in Kyoto. This is an American
café, along the highway or in any town or city, not
a noodle shop in a rural village of Shinano, or by the shores
of Lake Biwa.
The
overarching strength of this collection is in its authentic,
memorable rendering of the American scene in a form that
appears so fragile yet so resilient, attentive, nuanced,
and far-ranging.
An
important subset of poems running throughout the collection
are those about women, numbering over 30 and clearly
the primary subject to which Winke returns, again and again,
in his own role as husband, lover, dreamer, admirer, fascinated
observer, father, sympathetic human being:
week
by week
her face morphing
my adolescent girl |
it
slithers up
her inner thigh
snake tattoo |
furious
sax solo
an old lady
does the nasty rooster |
In
his introduction, editor Charles Trumbell says that this
is the first selected haiku volume for
Deep North Pressa type of book that I hope will become
our specialty . . . I sincerely hope that proves true.
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