Cor Van Den HeuvelRessenyes

Not at all sure how to rate this one—a usual conundrum with anthologies.

An excellent anthology of American haiku, but I can't help feel, especially in reading the multiple introductions, that it's looking at a fad that's come and gone. I'd urge anyone who, like me, was intrigued by some of these poems, to take down names and plug them into Amazon and see what you can find. So far I've only found stuff by Nick Virgilio and Gary Hotham, but both were more than worth the effort.

I had no idea that there was a body of Haiku (the 17-syllable requirement, by the by, is a bit of a falsity), both Japanese and American, with baseball as a subject. The earliest presented here date back to a Japanese baseball haiku (the world's first) from 1890. There is even a pretty decent one from 1959 by Jack Kerouac. The haiku are grouped by author in chronological order, first American, then Japanese (translated into English, printed in Japanese characters, and phonetic Japanese).

These are some favorites:

Rookie's first hit ---
picked off at first

(Bud Goodrich, 1919 ---)

geese flying north
the pitcher stops his windup
to watch

pitcher and catcher
head for the dugout
the batter stares at his bat

(both by Cor van den Heuvel, 1931 ---)

handsome pitcher
my eyes drift down
to the mound

(a delightful double entendre by one of the few female poets here, Brenda Gannam, 1950 ---)

the last kid picked
running his fastest
to right field

(Mike Dillon, 1950 ---)

rainy night
a hole in the radio
where a ball game should be

(Ed Markowski, 1954 ---)

my son runs toward
the budding tree ---
their first base

(Hoshino Tsunehiko, 1935 ---)

A delightful book on a field I had no idea existed, a thoughtful gift from an old friend who knows me well.

Excellent anthology; nice to pick up and browse through. Does not follow the "rules", so interesting just for that aspect.

4.5 stars

4.5 stars

Really charming! Who would have thought, baseball and haiku?

Baseball poetry rarely rises to the level of greatness. This is also true of topical haiku, which is usually bad, kitschy or both. Neither is true of any poem in this collection, which includes haiku from some of the great American haiku poets and excellent Japanese ones as well. Cor Van Den Heuvel's commentary only adds to the charm of this collection, which should have a place in every haiku library.

Beware. These are like a box of really good chocolates. If you eat too many at a time, you lose the specialness of any particular one.

This is the book that first got me interested in haiku. It's wonderful wonderful. It's an anthology of contemporary English-language haiku with a willingness to have a broad definition of what constitutes haiku. It has lots of good stuff in it, so I hate to quote so few -- go out and read the whole book. Probably my favorite haiku in the book is this first one by Bob Boldman. It combines such an odd mixture of feelings in a very stark image. The last one by John Wills is great for its syntax and its movement. Marlene Mountain also does a great job of capturing the heat, the sights, and the sounds of a single moment in an incredibly concise statement.

JANUARY FIRST
the fingers of the prostitute cold
-- Bob Boldman

summer night clothes whirling in a dryer
-- Marlene Mountain

dusk from rock to rock a waterthrush
-- John Wills

Reviewed in Blithe Spirit 9/3 Sep 1999