Montage #19, presented by Allan Burns, is now up here on The Haiku Foundation website. This week’s theme is “Quotidian Moments” and features the work of Dee Evetts, Carolyn Hall & John Stevenson.
winter commute
my hand finds a warm spot
on the handrail
— Dee Evetts
twilight
the poultry truck returns
with empty cages
— Carolyn Hall
evening light
a loaf of bread
on the cutting board
— John Stevenson
{ 18 comments }
← Previous Comments
Wyeth’s “Wind from the Sea” is my very favorite – and I’m pretty sure Ferris Gilli won’t mind my including here one of my favorite haiku of hers, which definitely recalled Wyeth’s painting to me:
a curtain billows
before the rain
scent of roses
Ferris Gilli
[Heron's Nest 2:8 (August 2000), Heron's Nest Award; HSA Members’ Anthology 2001; Gilli, Shaped by the Wind (2006)]
Hi, Billie. Thanks for your comments. Wyeth is definitely one of my favorite American painters. As a test, I’m attempting to link to one of his resonant quotidian moments.
“Wind from the Sea,” 1948
What a treat it was to visit this particular collection, Allan. I’ve enjoyed every one so far, and this one especially so. Dee and Carolyn and John are an inspired mix, and your choices are spot on.
It was also cool to see the “juxtaposition” with Andrew Wyeth. One of the most dog-eared books in my library is the Boston Museum’s “Andrew Wyeth” that I’ve loved since 1971. No matter how many times I open it, my breath is taken away by his gift.
One of the highlights of my life was visiting an exhibit of the work of all three Wyeths several years ago in Seattle. I could hardly believe my good fortune. There was one painting that remains the heart of that visit in my memory. It may have been Fence Line, but I’m not absolutely sure now that my memory isn’t what it once was. I could not walk away from that painting. The light within it was so intense, it just kept pulling me in. Good haiku does that too – and you’ve chosen some excellent examples of that.
Didn’t mean to go on and on – but I did want to thank you.
“… the image… retained its intuitive resonance without reducing itself to an idea or a statement…”.
I’m reminded of some tidbits from early 20th-c. Am poetry that pointed me toward an imagistic/haiku aesthetic in the first place:
“Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself”–Wallace Stevens
“No ideas/ but in things”–W. C. Williams
“A poem should be palpable and mute/ As a globed fruit,/ …wordless/ As the flight of birds./ …equal to:/ Not true./ …A poem should not mean/ But be.”–Archibald MacLeish
Of course, all those are themselves abstract statements; their most perfect realization (in my experience) is not to be found in these poets’ own work but in haiku, “curling tighter” being an excellent ex.
Thanks to John Stevenson for his comments. Maybe that extra level I’m having a hard time not finding in this haiku is because in the dead of winter my wife & I tend to drag our mattress out from the bedroom to before our wood-burning stove. Nothing like that radiant heat.
John Stevenson says “I can only add so much to the discussion”. But he says something which adds, I believe, immensely:
“… the image… retained its intuitive resonance without reducing itself to an idea or a statement…”.
Have just seen the comments on “curling tighter” and the invitation to comment. I’m glad to accept, though I can only add so much to the discussion.
I have a wood stove in my house and the poem came from experience. I saw this happening and thought, “That’s something.” The fact that the image seemed to retained its intuitive resonance without reducing itself to an idea or a statement made me think that it might be good material for a haiku.
I find the comments about consciously encountering the image with one’s body strike a familiar chord with me. I’ve recited this poem a number of times for audiences and I invariably find myself acting out the action with my right hand. The gesture is a gentle, incomplete grasping. While it doesn’t amount to a kenesic idiom, asfar as I know, it does seem evocative. The gesture, like the poem, seems to be “something” without becoming a message.
I appreciate the generosity of Alllan Burns in selecting poems for these Montage presentations, week after week. I think I have some conception of the effort involved.
And I’m always happy to find my poems close to those of Dee Evetts and Carolyn Hall!
Also love the sound of it: the hard “c” at the beginnings of lines 1 & 3 and the concluding near rhyme of “tighter” and “fire”. Trochaic rhythm of L1 reversed to the iamb of L2 then resumes in L3. Falling rhythm seems apt for incineration. There’s a rightness to it that makes it hard *not* to memorize.
Faluting highly . . .
Peter is on to something. With John’s curling leaf and his keen awareness of it, is the human, the poet’s, interaction with fire. This is where you may be Plato-like, Peter. That some deep element of collective memory OR of genetic makeup — your choice — draws us to fire. To stare into a bonfire, a campfire or into a fireplace — into the night, other lights off, Plato’s shadows dancing on the walls or against trees … ? I think a font of poetry or philosophy is also another great element: water. Sometimes while driving the Interstate highways I cross over or beside some large body of water. For me, personally, it is a coming back to loved places even to drive by in a car at 70+ mph. I sigh, at least in posture, let out my breath … and I have become aware of doing it. For a necessarily brief moment I am elsewhere. So too with air — facing a wind. The other classic element — earth. This too is the stuff of philosophy and haiku poetry. The smell of earth, the color, the fecundity.
So, yes, there is stuff of the elemental in us and in this Stevenson poem.
– Paul (MacNeil)
← Previous Comments