Lovely Reader, Meter Made

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April is National Poetry Month. Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, the monthlong series of events is intended to spur schools, libraries, publishers, booksellers and literary organizations around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. In keeping with that tradition, Somesville poet Carl Little, Stockton Springs writer Donna Gold and University of Maine English instructor Dana Wilde offer their takes on just a few of the new offerings from Maine’s community of poets and illustrators of poetry.

On a shadowed hill

A small hackmatack

performs its own sunrise

Andrew Gay

A BUTTERFLY CARELESS, by Andrew Gay, illustrations by Dudley Zopp, 2001, DZAG Press, Belfast, letterpress production by The Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vt.; unpaginated, paper cover (includes slipcase with original monotype), $120.

What form our poetry should take has challenged America’s poets for 100 years.

In the 1950s, young writers confronted by problems of form turned their attention to other cultures, notably in Asia, a place of ancient mystery and also Buddhism, which emphasizes (among other things) living totally in the present moment. Beat Generation writers such as Jack Kerouac were impressed by Japanese poetry’s capacity to evoke complete moments free of the distracting intellectualization of the modern West, and became interested in the tiny three-line poems called haiku.

By now, most American schoolchildren know what a haiku (or hokku or haikai) is – a poem with three lines of five, seven and five syllables each. They may even know that traditional Japanese haiku presents an image from nature with tension or humor and an indication of the season.

In this branch of postwar American poetry is “A Butterfly Careless” by Andrew Gay of Belfast. Most of its 37 “haiku-like” poems have three lines, but follow the syllable structure only loosely, to the credit of the author, who admits he’s “not an expert in haiku.”

Gay is a retired ophthalmologist and professor who has lived in Belfast since 1971. His poems have appeared in literary periodicals such as Modern Haiku and in a book, “Grey Light” (1996). His one-woman play, “Caitlin,” won a New England Festival of New Work award, and was produced and shown on Maine Public Television in 1995.

“The most important part of haiku,” he says, true to his literary inheritance, “is that it brings you to a certain moment in time that you can relive.”

Gay’s poems bring us images of Maine landscapes and characters, and they seek, as the author puts it, to provide an “aha moment,” a phrase used to describe a feeling of realization or pleasure, a sort of minor epiphany.

“Epiphany” is a strong word in this context, but Gay’s poems are a pleasure to read. They traverse the seasons, starting in spring and circling to winter. The opening poem is well chosen because it conveys one of the book’s sharpest images:

on a shadowed hill

a small hackmatack

performs its own sunrise

On the way to winter appears another strong poem:

flurries all day

the sky dark

neighbor burning brush

Like this. Some are more evocative than others, but overall these are deftly made poems, with a sureness of diction the form requires.

Most of the poems refer to a season, a convention known in Japanese as the “kigo.” “Flurries” signal early winter, for example. Many of the poems simply give us the word “spring” or “summer,” a tactic less powerful than the sensory details of the time and place itself.

The haikus of “A Butterfly Careless” are part of the ongoing American experiment with form. The results are pleasant. But as Kerouac and others discovered, Asian forms do not easily play on the strengths of English. English is spoken with stresses that create musical rhythms; Japanese, on the other hand, is spoken in unstressed syllables that have an emphatic rather than musical quality. Syllabic poetry – poems whose lines are measured not by beats, but by the number of syllables – is a form that rarely produces in English works of much felt power or emotion. This is the reason Kerouac, Gay and others are wise to play loose with the syllable counts in the lines of their haikus: Strict adherence to 5-7-5 syllable lines is possible, but requires flattening of English stresses and sound patterns, sapping some strengths of our language.

Haiku is a derivative form even in Japan. It took shape around the 14th century, when poets began to carve the opening section of the “renga,” a much longer form with strict conventions of its own, into works recited individually. The openings of rengas were developed by the 17th century poet Basho and others as amusements, and haiku became a separate established form by the 19th century.

Some Japanese poems, including haikus, could only be experienced once. The poet intended a specific profound effect on his reader, and the words were just one element of the experience. A particular weight and texture of paper would be selected for its tactile effect. The paper and envelope were scented with oils or petals. When the reader received the missive, he would gain an initial impression, then on opening it, the paper inside would stir further response. The manuscript contained not only the poem’s words in careful calligraphy, but also drawings. The reader might be directed to a certain spot in a garden, and served a certain tea. At a specific moment in the tea ritual, the missive would be delivered. The full poetic experience was available just once.

“A Butterfly Careless” acknowledges the synesthetic dispositions of its Japanese predecessors through its top-quality paper and typography, and four drawings by artist Dudley Zopp, whose works have appeared in the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Portland Museum of Art. These monotypes are black-and-white abstract images with components resembling finger painting. They complement the poems, Gay says, by enhancing “the participation of the reader and audience.”

Dana Wilde is a NEWS copy editor.