Frogpond 34.3 • Autumn 2011 (pdf) - Haiku Society of America

drifts so gently from the sky that it allows a listener to also
hear the water collected by aspen leaves and dropping from
them. The slant-assonance of “a”-like vowels (aspen/rain/autumn)
connect to the implied “fall.”
The second section of the book (“More Haiku and Senryu”)
maintains the meditative descriptive voice.
The third section comprises two rensaku. Kudryavitsky subtitles
each as a “Haiku Sequence.” He organizes both temporally,
the haiku leading from dawn through a composite day
to dusk. He sets one in Tuscany and the other in Flanders, and
the haiku do give a larger picture together than separately.
The “Ghent Renkasu” is a little more successful because its
haiku, such as (p. 54):
castle keep
ninety-nine steps
to the rising sun
give a more individual sense of place.
The final section is a single haibun, of Ufa City and the Silk
Road.
Another recent collection of haiku and senryu from the Emerald
Isles is Initial Response by Maeve O’Sullivan (also from
Dublin). This is O’Sullivan’s first solo haiku/senryu collection.
(She co-authored the 2005 Double Rainbow with poet Kim
Richardson.) At first glance it’s a more intriguing book than
Capering Moons: the cover and interior of Initial Response
dazzle with exuberant ink-scribble-and-splash art by the haiku
poet John Parsons; its poems are sequenced alphabetically
rather than seasonally; its cream paper and robust font are
easy on the eye. Unfortunately, a typical poem such as (p. 18):
one hundred degrees
ice-cold lemonade
warm banana bread
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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