A New Resonance 8
Jim Kacian & Dee Evetts (editors)
2013, Winchester VA, Red Moon Press, pp.175
ISBN 978-1-946848 -22-5
$17US

Reviewed by Marie Marshall *

It’s a personal prejudice of mine that as little should be written as possible about haiku, and the same goes for writing about people who write it. You’ll forgive me, therefore, if I deal with the presentation of this anthology before I touch on the contents.

This latest in the New Resonance series is actually beautiful to look at, its covers using the reds and purples of an Emil Nolde painting, setting off yellow lettering – ‘Resonance’ being prominent. In place of a rear-cover blurb are the words

Seventeen poets
whose names you will hear often
in the coming years

and it doesn’t take a genius to spot the arrangement of syllables. Inside, the distraction starts. The business of a book – the title page and publication details – can’t be avoided. The busy-ness of a blank flyleaf, a foreword, a further title page, a list of contributors, an editorial review of the first haijin, and the publication details of her haiku – all before the first poem – arguably can. For the ninth in the series, I would like to see the editor consider what may or may not be superfluous. The first poem is ‘about’ beginning; ironically it’s on page 9. It’s a simple, enigmatic monostich

spring rain backwards until the beginning

and it is the intriguing (proper) start of the book. The nature referent is almost intrusive, interrupting an apparent grammatical flow, making the initial word ‘spring’ wonderfully ambiguous. ‘Time is not to be relied on’ runs the editorial commentary, and the poem ‘invite[s] us to read [it] over and over’. Does it? Should it? Would the shade of Basho gnash his teeth at the thought of our oohs and ahs as we fixate on the eternal plop of a frog into an eternal pool? Whatever – Melissa Allen’s one-liner is a great way to open the show. The rest of her selections are full of strength, surprising, compulsive stuff; the book leads with an ace.

Then comes another moment of superfluity. The next poet – each poet – is introduced not only by an editorial comment and publication details, but by a repeated list of all the poets, with the featured poet’s name in bold. Arguably it’s like two bars’ rest in music with the conductor still waving his baton, but please expect that at least fifty-one of your one hundred and seventy-five pages will not contain haiku. You’re looking at a stack of sandwiches, so expect a lot of bread.

But the filling!

The featured poets include many I know, such as Johannes S H Bjerg, Aubrie Cox, and Christina Nguyen, and many I don’t know. Again I’m uncomfortable writing too much about their creations. I can say that much of the poetry in A New Resonance 8 shows that there’s a happy coincidence in the Japanese words mono no aware and the English word ‘aware’. I’m going to extract a couple that stand out for me, and leave the rest for you to come across when you read the book for yourself. First Lucas Strensland’s

sleepless night
where else does she have
owl tattoos

and secondly John Hawk’s monostich

how should I put this broken window

yet another lovely monkeying-around with grammar and ambiguity. Perhaps the weakest poem is David Caruso’s

holy war
death
by ancient literature

– I feel like saying yes, you’ve made your point, but should you be even making a ‘point’ with haiku? Let me say anyhow that if that’s the weakest poem in the book – and it’s not that bad! – that says a lot for the quality of the book as a whole. After a while I even got used to the intrusive ‘bread’ pages. It’s a book to approach in may ways. I like to pick it up, flip open a random page (flip over a couple more if I land on the bread!) and read what I find there. If I occasionally land on the same poem, then that’s a serendipitous plop in the pool. This book is full of high quality modern haiku, stuff of a much higher standard than you’d even find in most specialist magazines.

Rated ★★★★☆

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* I’m grateful to Johannes S H Bjerg for the review copy. I would have done a shorter review for the zen space, but for the fact that the next issue is in the hands of a guest editor.

I seem to recall, from James A Michener’s Centennial, that twentieth century ranchers with sizeable flocks of sheep deliberately kept a few head of cattle, so that they could legitimately call themselves ‘cattlemen’, in order to benefit from the cachet of that name. Well, I’m an author. The fact that I also cook, clean, and have a paid job – all of which takes up most of my waking day – is neither here nor there. This means that in order to keep the content of this web site fresh, however, I have to manufacture news on a slow news day.

So, what is actually happening in my non-quotidian world? Am I currently authoring? ‘Yes and no’ is the answer to that. My second novel, The Everywhen Angels, is currently with three publishers, two of which actively expressed interest in having the manuscript; I have recently tweaked the content slightly, to reflect how the world has moved on in the handful of years since I completed it. I have plot outlines and chapters-in-progress of two other novels, neither of which has progressed for some time, I have to admit. There are many genuine reasons. However, the more these reasons accumulate the more they seem like a list of excuses – the household chores, the paid work, the fact that for much of 2012 I was working on a new collection of poetry (I am not a fish) for a publisher, the promotion of that published collection and of my first novel Lupa, the editorial work on The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes, the quarterly editorial work on the zen space…

Something had to give, and it has been work on my next novel(s). So what else of note is there? Well, since 2011 I have not been submitting much in the way of poetry to magazines. The exception being that recently I dropped a handful of haiku to Bones Journal and to Blithe Spirit (the poetry magazine of the British Haiku Society) and had one accepted at each, bringing my total of poems published since 2005 to two hundred and thirty-two. I need hardly add that this does not include poems blogged etc., which would take the number into the thousands. Nor does it include an extempore poem recently tweeted to the Scottish Poetry Library, which they instantly re-tweeted to all their followers. Nor, for that matter, does it include the poems that were published but which I’ve forgotten.*

Work on The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes has reached galley proof stage. I shall be engaged in that over this weekend. Publication is late, but the anthology should be out in July. I am looking forward to that greatly, as is the whole of the editorial team. With all the work mentioned above going on, I rather foolishly proposed to five fellow-poets a small chapbook anthology – I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I promise! Thankfully the next issue of the zen space has a guest editor…

All this makes me realise that what I do not have, and should have, is a schedule detailing what I have to do. It should list tasks as ‘urgent’, ‘important’, and ‘routine’; attention to serious writing should never drop into the ‘routine’ category, even if it is to be tackled routinely, if you see what I mean.

It is 8:15 on Saturday morning. I have been up since 4:15 and have spent most of that time here at the keyboard. Have I written much? No, I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t, but I will admit that it’s a wonderful time of day for it. I really must put ‘making a schedule’ on the list of urgent tasks for today.

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*A lot of my records went missing in 2007.

©Bookseeker Agency

Poster

Click on the thumbnail of the image you want to open it; right click and save or drag it to your desktop. All images are based on a poster idea used by the wonderful Scottish Poetry Library, but are under my copyright, but are released for use in unmodified form as posters or wallpapers. Enjoy.

M.

PC wallpaper

Mac wallpaper

© 2008 Marie Marshall.
Twitter @MairibheagM

© 2008 Marie Marshall.
Twitter @MairibheagM

Ratty had been emailing me faster than I could reply, not that I’m all that savvy with electronic communications. Actually I spend most of my time down my hole engrossed in World of Warcraft, deep in the wizard-world of Azeroth – I’m a Night Elf from Outland – currently operating at the fourth level of Cataclysm and on the run from Hakkar the Soulflayer… not relevant, not relevant… but on the other hand not much need for emails either.

Ratty’s emails, they went along these lines… hang on, let me open one up and cut-and-paste it for you, here we go…

“Hey Mole, I’m due to fly out to Cyprus today and go on board the Wildwood Warrior. We’re going to sail for the Gaza strip in a couple of days time with a cargo of humanitarian aid to see if we can get past the blockade. There is still nothing, Moley, absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats! LOL. Follow me on twitter @riverbankratty.”

That was last week. I can’t look at his tweets, I fear for the dear fellow. The world out there is a big place and a dangerous place. ‘Messing about in boats’ is one thing, messing about in big boats in a sea full of bigger boats bristling with guns is another thing altogether. Oh well, at least he can swim, and he always was an adrenalin-junkie, Pan knows! Like I said, I get my adrenalin rush from virtual wargaming.

Talking of which I bumped into Badger the other day coming out of the Red Lion. Bumped literally. He had his head down and his nose in his Mac Book Air, which was open. As we collided he let it slip and it would have shattered into a thousand very expensive pieces on the cobbles of the pub courtyard if I hadn’t fielded it like Alastair Cook taking a slip catch. Of course I couldn’t help noticing what was on his screen – World of Warcraft! It was an irritated ol’ Badger who snatched the lappie out of my hands.

“Hey Badgie,” I said. “Didn’t realise you were into ‘the Craft’.”

“You make it sound like the confounded Freemasons,” he said with a frown. “Yes I do the odd bit of gaming.”

“Well maybe we have crossed swords at some stage,” I said. “I’m Dalforstin the Night-Elf. Who are you?”

He mumbled something I didn’t catch.

“What was that?”

“I said I’m Kolkhatana, Warrior Princess of the Dwarves. Satisfied?” he snapped, and stalked off in moderately high dudgeon. I was silent – gobsmacked actually – as his hunched figure hurried away. He was cutting quickly round the hedge at the end of the lane when a sudden thought struck me.

“Kolkhatana? Hey, didn’t we…” I called. But he had gone. And it didn’t bear thinking about.

I decided it was time to drop in on Toad Hall. Things had been quiet there for some time. I did know that the upkeep was rather steepish these days and that Toad, bless his silly heart, had been threatening to give it to the National Trust and move into the gamekeeper’s cottage. Presumably that would mean  that the gamekeeper would have to move out – Toad wouldn’t have thought of that, of course. Anyhow, I ambled along what had once been a leafy lane… well it was still a leafy lane for most of its length but the here at the village end of it there was a tightly-packed knot of new houses – Toadfields. His Toadfulness had sold a patch of the old estate off to a developer in order to settle a tax bill. So anyhow, like I said, there I was ambling along the lane which led eventually to Toad Hall, when I realised I wasn’t on my own. Stoats and Weasels, rucks of ‘em, were popping out of the trees and hurrying excitedly down the lane. I could see the increasing crowd three hundred yards away funnelling through the lodge-gates and on to Toad’s gravelled driveway*.

Momentarily I paused. I wondered whether it was another invasion such as the one we four – me, Ratty, Badgie, and Toady – had fought off back in the day. But these stoats and weasels seemed in good spirits, not belligerent, as though setting off to have a good time. They were all relatively young ‘uns too.

I accosted a ferret in a cap and shades (incongruous those, because the sun was about to set) and asked him what was afoot.

“Hey bruv,” he said. “It’s ‘im, innit. It’s da beats, bruv, da beats. It’s totally sick, sick as aids, bruv!”

I resisted the temptation to say “No hablo Chav” and let him go on his way. Still I stood and wondered what in Pan’s name my ol’ pal Bufo Bufo was up to this time. We’d been through the camp site, the theme park, the WW2 vehicle museum, the health spa… none of those had attracted a surge of young mustelidae like this and, crucially, none of them had made any money either. I straggled behind the crowd as evening fell.

Toad hall was in darkness, but by the light of the hundreds of glo-sticks the stoats and weasels were carrying, and the luminescent screens of hundreds more iPhones, I could make out some sort of bulky structure in front of it – a stage? A dais?

Suddenly a siren sounded and a great cheer went up from the crowd. Then the cheering itself was drowned by a deafening swell of electronic music at (I guess) one-hundred-and-thirty beats per second – the unmistakeable sound of Euro-Trance. Then fireworks exploded, lasers and strobe lights flashed, the stage was lit up by spotlights and there… there… there behind what could only be a set of decks bristling with controls, screens, sequencer keyboards, all the gubbins of Electro… there in a brilliant white T-shirt, cycling shades, and headphones was Toad! Toad grinning from ear to ear. Toad punching the air in time to the music, while the stoats and weasels danced and bounced and punched the air in response.

“TOADMEISTER! TOADMEISTER!” they yelled in unison.

You could have knocked me down with a wet piece of hedge-sorrel. But as I became swept up in the euphoria, began to bounce, began to dance, began to punch the air, I realised that at last, at last, Toad had got what he had always wanted.

Acclamation!

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* I would be grateful to know, by the way, why Americans park on a driveway and drive on a parkway.

©Bookseeker Agency / Balbirnie Collective

Popped my head in briefly to see that everything was in full swing. Gratified for the exposure, the poetry-reading, and the interest shown in my books.

©Bookseeker Agency

Members of the Balbirnie Collective, ©Bookseeker Agency

I was told that my books – my novel Lupa and my poetry collection I am not a fish – would occupy ‘a corner of a table somewhere’ at Balbirnie Craft Centre. In fact I was delighted to be informed by my agent that I had a whole bookshelf to myself when he arrived there today – see below. A pity I can’t fill it, but there will be more books there shortly…

‘Reading Corner’, ©Bookseeker Agency

The old North Bridge, Concord MA.

I’ve a couple of reasons for posting the poem below. Firstly I’m continuing to let today’s readers get to know my older writing. Secondly I’ve recently been discussing alternative views of history, in particular the imperative to strip away the gilding that patriotism has put on certain things. In 2008 I was invited to contribute a poem about the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s. I decided to use an old form – the ballad – and write from the point of view of what we used to call a Native American, before that term came to be used of the aboriginal people of that continent, that is to say a white farmer; this particular individual was amongst the large section of the population – getting on for half, I believe – whose political inclination was towards loyalty to the Crown. The poem became an exercise in imagination and a calling-into-question of war, as well as in the repetitive structure of the ballad and its metrical integrity. I hope you enjoy it and, if you’re American, I hope you don’t mind being asked to see things from another point of view. [Note on formatting: I find I'm unable to indent alternate lines, as originally typeset; this alters the visual impact of the poem a little, and for this I apologise.]

__________

                   The Ballad of the Loyalist

When the snow is on the ridge, and a rime upon the bridge
and the whippoorwill calls out in solemn tones,
Over wooden span and arch in my scarlet coat I march -
I’m the shade of British soldier William Jones.

I was raised upon this soil – a New England farm my toil -
and brought up a faithful subject of the Crown.
Though the rebels cussed and swore at the scarlet coat I wore,
I fought for King George, to put sedition down!
Though it gives some people pause, there’s a true and loyal cause,
there’s a greater good, a better song to sing;
In the tavern by the forge, a good health to German George
I would drink, and wish a long life to our King.

When the snow is on the ridge, and a rime upon the bridge
and the whippoorwill calls out in solemn tones,
Over wooden span and arch in my scarlet coat I march -
I’m the shade of British soldier William Jones.

Though the contrabandiers’ plaint seemed legitimate – it ain’t -
for the tea they dumped at Boston, it was cheap!
Contrabandiers hated tax, but our English laws were lax;
As the rebels sowed, as surely they would reap!
And the contrabaniers’ ploy – throwing snowballs at a boy -
there were stones inside them to provoke a fight…
Then a “massacre” they cried, and though many people died
now their propaganda hides the truth from sight.

When the snow is on the ridge, and a rime upon the bridge
and the whippoorwill calls out in solemn tones,
Over wooden span and arch in my scarlet coat I march -
I’m the shade of British soldier William Jones.

With a Hessian on my left, and my gun at shoulder-heft,
I marched bravely from my Massachusetts farm;
With a Mohawk at my side, I set off to stem the tide
of sedition, and protect the Law from harm.
Though the foe that I did face was like me, of native race,
it was he who marched to perpetrate a lie;
Though our culture was the same – why, I even knew his name -
we were mortal, and each one of us could die.

When the snow is on the ridge, and a rime upon the bridge
and the whippoorwill calls out in solemn tones,
Over wooden span and arch in my scarlet coat I march -
I’m the shade of British soldier William Jones.

Maybe things ain’t as they’re taught, maybe war is good for naught -
there were heroes, there were villains on each side;
If a monument you’d raise, or you’d sing a song of praise,
then kneel on the ground where we all fought and died,
Search among the mould and spall, till you find a musket ball,
and make that your icon, set it up on high -
Such a thing can stop your breath, save your life, or bring you death…
think upon it when you ask a man to die!

When the snow is on the ridge, and a rime upon the bridge
and the whippoorwill calls out in solemn tones,
Over wooden span and arch in my scarlet coat I march -
I’m the shade of British soldier William Jones.

So I fell, and now the bones of poor farmer William Jones
lie beneath his native clay in silent rest,
On a Massachusetts farm, far from trumpet’s shrill alarm,
I would seem to sleep the slumber of the blessed.
But my lonely ghost now walks with a thousand others, stalks
o’er the old North Bridge. The beauty of the scene
Belies all the pain and blood, all the marching and the mud -
we march into dark, as though we’d never been…

When the snow is on the ridge, and a rime upon the bridge
and the whippoorwill calls out in solemn tones,
Over wooden span and arch in my scarlet coat I march –
I’m the shade of British soldier William Jones –
Through the snowy winter night, in the deathly pale moonlight,
with my spectre-comrades, dressed in blue or red.
All you people of the town, safe beneath your eiderdown,
think not on us… no… for we are all long dead!